


Another Word for Never

by squirenonny



Series: Voltron: Duality [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ADHD Lance, AU, Autistic Keith, Autistic Pidge, Found Family, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hunk has GAD, M/M, Matt and Shiro have PTSD, eventual Klance, neurodiverse defenders of the universe, non-binary Pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 204,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7638178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shiro used to dream of Earth. That was before the Arena, before Haggar, before he joined the Galra army. At least he has an ally, a Galra officer named Keith. Together they plan to bring down Zarkon's empire from the inside.</p><p>Matt never thought he'd see his family again. Then he crash-lands on Earth and Pidge rescues him from Garrison custody. But his homecoming is short-lived. Now the Holt siblings, along with Lance and Hunk, must find the Voltron lions and free the universe from Galra control.</p><p>Or: Galra!Keith, double agent!Shiro, red paladin!Matt, black paladin!Allura, full series AU.</p><p>[Season 1 of Voltron: Duality. COMPLETE]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Transfer

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Another Word for Never](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15110240) by [EmmaInu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaInu/pseuds/EmmaInu)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update! I've been going back through this fic to add in trigger warnings on chapters that warrant them. Blanket warning up front for moderate violence--gore will be tagged, as will prominent character deaths, but general warfare/violence (including deaths of unnamed characters, deaths that happen off-screen, and deaths of antagonists) won't be tagged for each instance.
> 
> Also note that I started writing this, and had a large portion of it planned out, in the gap between seasons 1 and 2, so a lot of what's happened in canon or been revealed in interviews since the show premiered does not apply to this AU. In particular: Hunk is Hawaiian in this fic, based on the fan theory going around before he was confirmed to be Samoan. His heritage/family background was established in this 'verse by the time it was confirmed otherwise, so I'm running with it. There are already plenty of other differences, including the other paladins' family structures, Allura's age, Matt's entire personality... For the most part, just leave canon at the door and enjoy the ride. <3

Shiro was really starting to dislike Commander Sendak. He'd been on the bridge, saluting, for five minutes and Sendak had yet to acknowledge him. Evidently whatever Sendak was discussing with Haxus was more important than the "urgent" summons that had brought Shiro running from the far end of the _Predator._ That wasn't unusual, exactly, just frustrating. But of course, who would complain? The two officers were intimidating enough on their own: Sendak big and brutish even without his massive mechanized arm; Haxus slighter, built like a cheetah ready to run his prey into the ground. Put them together and only a fool would pick a fight.

So Shiro kept his face blank. Calm. Respectful. _Play the part, Champion._ Obedience was crucial in the Galra army, and above all for the vanishingly small number of soldiers who had risen from the Arena. Shiro, like the rest, was watched closely for signs of insubordination.

He couldn't afford to screw up now.

He stood straight and tall, head up, mechanical arm across his chest in a salute, and waited for Sendak to remember he existed.

Another five minutes passed. Galra hurried by on either side of Shiro, stealing glances at him. At the one-time Champion, undefeated for six months. At the one and only human in Zarkon’s army. At the favorite pet of a Galra prince.

Sweat beaded on Shiro’s brow; his legs began to cramp from his sprint from the training deck.

Finally Sendak dismissed Haxus and crossed to where Shiro waited. He acknowledged Shiro’s salute with a nod, and Shiro fell into parade rest, hands clasped behind his back, feet shoulder width apart. It was an entirely human gesture, a holdover from his time with the Galaxy Garrison, and that made it a minor rebellion—the only rebellion Shiro allowed himself.

Sendak’s lip curled at the gesture, but for once he didn’t comment on it. Instead he called up the display on his mechanical arm and swiped. Shiro's wrist-mounted communicator chirped at an incoming message, which Shiro opened and quickly scanned.

He glanced at Sendak. “Transfer orders, sir?”

“Effective immediately.” Sendak’s smile was more of a bestial snarl, savage and dangerous. The aperture of his prosthetic eye narrowed as he studied Shiro. “You’ll have to tell your minder.”

“You mean my commander.”

Shiro’s voice was, perhaps, a bit too sharp for a new recruit speaking to the ship’s commander. Shiro found it hard to care. He glared back at Sendak until the Galra’s smile widened.

“If he doesn’t want to go with you, he’ll have to arrange a new nanny. Tell him he has one hour to get you off my ship.”

Shiro swallowed his protests—an _hour_?—and saluted Sendak once more. “Vrepit sa,” he growled, then turned and stalked off the bridge.

* * *

“Are all your commanders like him?" Shiro asked as soon as the door to his small, stuffy quarters closed behind him.

The lump on one of the two narrow bunks grunted a response from behind a massive book. A _physical_ book, which Shiro found no less amusing after seeing it almost daily for three months. How many Galra owned even one book, let alone the two dozen or so stacked haphazardly beneath the bunk?

Shiro leaned against his own bunk and raised an eyebrow. “He called you my nanny again.”

“To be fair, he’s basically right.”

“ _Keith_.”

With a groan, Keith stuck a scrap of paper in his book and set it aside. His hair was matted with sleep, and one of his bat-like ears had turned inside out. It twitched twice and fixed itself, and Keith rubbed at the dark pillow lines on his cheek. He stared at Shiro with tired yellow eyes. “Shiro, three months ago you were still fighting in the Arena. If you wanted them to think you changed your mind this fast, you should have been kicking more puppies.”

Shiro rolled his eyes and crouched in search of a duffel bag. “You don't even _have_ puppies out here.”

“So improvise.”

Shiro allowed himself a small chuckle. He didn't know where Keith had heard about the evils of puppy-kicking; it didn't seem important enough to make an appearance in Galra military intelligence or whatever rumors there were floating around on the intergalactic equivalent of the internet. Shiro had certainly never mentioned it to him, and Shiro was ninety percent of Keith's source material. But that was Keith--always turning up new human jokes or bits of mundane trivia. Shiro appreciated it, even if he didn't understand it. It made the warship feel a little more like home.

Shiro grabbed Keith’s bag from the floor and tossed it at him. “You’d better start packing.”

Keith stared down at the bag. “What?”

“Transfer orders. Sendak wants us off his ship.”

Keith’s voice soured. “What.”

Shiro tossed one last pair of socks into his bag and zipped it up. If there was one thing to be said about being a prisoner-turned-soldier, it was that packing was quick. He stood, slinging the bag across his shoulders.

“No, seriously.” The other bunk groaned as Keith rolled out of it. He was the only Galra Shiro had yet met who was actually shorter than him, a fact Shiro exploited whenever possible. “What do you mean, _transfer orders_? Where are we going? Why does Sendak want us gone? What--?” Keith cut off with a frustrated grunt, and Shiro sighed.

“All I know is that Sendak said I have an hour to be off the ship. Here.” He brought up the orders on his communicator and forwarded them to Keith, who went silent for a moment as he read.

When he finished, he huffed and crossed his arms. “Well that tells me nothing.”

Shiro offered him a weak smile. “Welcome to Zarkon’s army.”

* * *

Pidge had been up on the roof of the Garrison when the siren went off. Their first thought, once the initial shock of steak knives stabbing their eardrums faded, was _fire drill_. Then Iverson’s voice had come on the PA telling everyone to stay in their rooms, and then there was a ball of fire—not a meteorite, but a falling ship—out over the desert.

They’d done the only logical thing, and took off running. If it meant leaving behind Lance and Hunk, who had found Pidge on the roof listening to the deep space transmission...well, Pidge wasn’t going to complain about evading _that_ interrogation.

Except when Pidge parked themself on the cliff overlooking the temporary Garrison base that had popped up in the desert near the crash site, Hunk and Lance were right behind them.

“What are you doing?” Pidge demanded, digging through their backpack for a pair of digital binoculars.

“I honestly don’t even know,” Hunk said. “I should be in my room right now. Did you hear Iverson? This isn’t a drill. We’re supposed to stay inside. We’re supposed to let the adults handle this. But you ran off, and Lance said that was suspicious and we had to follow, and I guess I just didn’t want to be left alone on a rooftop in the middle of the night. So sue me.”

Sighing, Pidge, lifted their binoculars and scanned the desert floor below. The mobile base had only a single tent-like structure, but there had to be at least a dozen vehicles around it. Jeeps and hovercraft and even a tank. _They're sure taking this seriously._

“What is it?” Lance’s elbow jabbed Pidge in the ribs as he flopped down beside them. “Aliens? Spies? Lemme see.” He didn’t wait for a response, just plucked the binoculars out of Pidge’s hands.

“Hey!”

“I’ll be quick, jeez. Learn to share, Gunderson.”

“Sorry about him,” Hunk said. "Lance, don't be an ass."

Pidge blew out a long breath. There was a reason they didn’t hang out with these two more often. Hunk and Lance ( _especially_ Lance) were way too much to handle for extended periods of time. Even just _inside_ the classroom was pushing the limit.

But Pidge let Lance keep the binoculars for now and tuned out the furious whispers as Hunk tried to convince Lance to apologize. It wasn’t as though there was anything outside the tent that mattered. Nothing besides the ship itself, which wasn’t something Pidge recognized—not Garrison. Not _human,_ unless some other country had completely redesigned their ships since the last time Pidge looked.

They didn’t want to get their hopes up, but there was a very good chance that whoever was inside that tent was an alien, which meant there was at least a slim chance they could point Pidge toward their family.

The first thing to do was take a look inside. Garrison security was tight, but Pidge had been hacking their computers for a year now. They knew all the weak points, all the shortcuts the Garrison took when they redesigned their systems. And out here? In a tent they’d set up in less than ten minutes?

Yeah, what they had going here didn’t deserve to be called a firewall. Maybe a line of police tape politely asking Pidge to keep out.

Pidge had the cameras streaming on their laptop in less than a minute.

Their cry of triumph, however, faltered when they saw what was happening inside. A rudimentary med bay had been set up, a single bed with a single monitor. The young man on the bed strained against his restraints.

“No. _Please_! Let me go! Let me _go!_ ”

“Oh my god,” Pidge whispered. They couldn’t seem to get a full breath. Couldn’t look anywhere but at the laptop screen, even though Lance was draped across their shoulders, demanding to see what was happening, even though Hunk was lurking just behind the pair of them, asking questions.

“Hey, wait a minute...” Lance leaned closer to the screen as the medics said something about quarantine and sedation. “I know that guy! He was on the Kerberos mission!”

“They’re not even listening to him,” Hunk said.

Pidge snapped the computer shut and shoved it into their bag. _Oh my god. Oh my_ god _._ “I have to get him out of there.”

“Wait, what?” Lance grabbed Pidge’s arm as they searched for a point on the cliff where the drop was less "twenty vertical feet" and more "uncontrollable twenty-foot slide". “Hang on. I thought _I_ was in charge of crazy ideas on this team.”

Pidge shook him off. “I’m not going to just stand here and watch while they sedate him!”

Lance tilted his head to the side, frowning at Pidge. “Is this about aliens?”

“No, Lance! It’s not about _aliens_. That’s--” Pidge’s voice hitched. “That’s my _brother_ in there.”

That shocked the other two into silence for a moment, and Pidge took the opportunity to skid down the hillside. They were already running through plans in their head by the time they picked themself up at the bottom of the slope and brushed the dust from their clothes. _I need a distraction. An explosion? How can I build a bomb in the next thirty seconds?_

Scraping feet and soft cursing chased Pidge down the hill and they turned, blinking at Lance and Hunk. What were they doing here? "You’re going to get kicked out of the Garrison if you aren’t careful.”

“So are you,” Lance shot back.

Pidge scowled. “That’s different.”

“Because it’s your brother?” Hunk glanced over the top of the dry shrubs lining the base of the cliff, then ducked down out of sight. He looked more than a little anxious about being so close to what was certainly a restricted area, but his voice was resolute. “You can’t take them on alone.”

“Yeah.” Lance brought his fist down on his open palm. “We’re a team, and that means we’re in this together. So. What’s the plan? Deep cover? Frontal assault?”

“With _what_ weapons?” Hunk asked. “Unless you have some latent psychic powers you’d like to manifest, we're a few guns short of 'guns blazing.'”

Pidge just gaped at them.

They had to be joking. Choosing Pidge over the Garrison? Why? The three of them didn't stand a chance against the Garrison. They were the lowest ranked team at the Garrison—the pilot who had yet to complete a simulation without major structural damage to his ship, the engineer who got too motion-sick to do his job, and the unsociable shrimp of a communications officer with an attitude problem.

But if Hunk and Lance wanted to throw it all away to help Matt, Pidge wasn't about to question it. They pushed aside a branch and squinted at the base. “We need a distraction.”

“No worries, Pidge, I've got you covered,” said Lance immediately, with a grin that promised trouble.

Pidge hesitated, but, well, Lance _was_ the most distracting member of the team. “Fine,” they said. “Sure. Go wild. Give us as much time as you can.”

Lance flashed a thumbs up. “You got it, Gunderson—er. Holt? Whatever. Wish me luck.”

* * *

It didn’t take luck so much as a helping hand from Hunk, who hot wired a low-altitude hoverbike for Lance. Pidge didn’t see where Lance went after that, but about ninety seconds later explosions lit up the night sky on the far side of the mobile base. The impacts shook the ground under Pidge and Hunk and whipped the Garrison troops up into a frenzy.

More than a dozen soldiers piled into their vehicles and sped off toward the source of the attack, leaving Pidge and a very nervous Hunk a clear shot at the front door.

Pidge darted in, kicking the first guard in the knee. He screamed and toppled, and Pidge paused just long enough to wrestle the stun baton from his belt loop, then took off running. Hunk crashed after them, whispering warnings that Pidge elected not to hear.

The mobile base was, thankfully, quite small, just three short corridors branching off the central chamber. Pidge zapped another soldier and two medics, and then there was Matt, pale and fragile-looking on a gurney. He’d lost weight since he’d left home—a _lot_ of weight. There were bags under his eyes and knots in his hair, and Pidge's legs turned to jello at the sight.

“Matt...”

Hunk glanced at Pidge as he joined them, then started working on the restraints. “I’ve got your brother, Pidge,” he said, sliding an arm under Matt’s knees and shoulders. “You just worry about the guards.”

“Right.” Pidge glanced around the cold, sterile walls of the med bay, fingers itching for—they didn’t know what. A way to make the Garrison pay for losing Matt. For covering it up. For tying him down and knocking him out when he’d _finally_ found his way home. Would Pidge and their mom have ever known about this, if Pidge hadn’t been on the roof tonight?

Pidge wanted to burn the entire Garrison to the ground.

Instead, they headed back the way they'd come, stunning the second soldier again as he tried to grab Hunk. They made it outside easily enough, and headlights in the distance momentarily dazzled Pidge. The soldiers were returning.

A blast of exhaust from overhead made Pidge cough and stumble back. They ran into Hunk, who grunted, squinting upward.

“Hey, guys. Need a ride?”

“Lance!” Hunk cried. “You didn’t die!”

Glancing at the approaching headlights, Pidge scrambled up onto the bike’s open back. Hunk passed Matt up to them, then climbed up himself.

Lance gave them both a dirty look. “You know, I expected a little more confidence from my team.”

“You’re joking, right?” Pidge locked their arms around Matt as Lance took off, keeping just ahead of the Garrison speeders. “I’ve seen you fly.”

“Pssh. In simulators. This is real life.”

“Yeah,” said Hunk, looking a little green as Lance took a turn too sharply. “And real death when you crash.”

“I’m _not_ gonna crash.”

A Jeep careened out of a gully ahead, and Lance pulled up sharply to avoid the sudden spray of bullets. Pidge braced both feet against the side of the speeder and buried their nose in Matt’s hair. “Less talking, more _not dying_ please!”

Lance muttered something that was lost to the howling wind. He gunned the engine, Hunk yelled in fear, and Pidge kept their eyes screwed shut, fingers curling into the grimy, sweat-drenched rags Matt wore. _I found you_ , they thought. _I found you._

* * *

Twenty minutes later found Shiro and Keith on a shuttle to the _Envoy_ , Commander Torrak’s warship, along with a few dozen other soldiers and nonessential staff. Shiro watched through a viewscreen as Sendak’s ship opened a wormhole and disappeared from sight.

There hadn’t been time to dig for information before leaving the  _Predator_. Maybe that had been by design. Maybe just an unlucky coincidence. Either way, Shiro felt antsy. He walked a thin line here in the Galra army between discovery and impotence. He had to push the boundaries to keep himself from feeling like a traitor to the human race, yet he never stopped worrying about pushing too far. All it took was a single misstep, and he and Keith were both dead.

Without information he was powerless, and he hated it. It felt like being back in the Arena, where there were only two rules: Take things as they come, and try not to die.

Keith stood next to him, silent and frowning.

“We couldn’t have stayed,” Shiro said. He wasn’t sure who he was saying it for; Keith had always been more of an act-first-think-later sort of person. It didn't bother him, having to react without all the facts. Or any of the facts. Keith did seem bothered by the transfer orders, though. “Direct orders from Sendak...as long as we’re on his ship, no one but Zarkon himself could override that.”

A frustrated growl curled in the back of Keith’s throat. “I know.”

“We have a habit of toeing the line between independent thinking and mutiny, but this would have been a step too far.”

“I _know_.”

Shiro paused, studying Keith’s face. Once he’d found it unreadable: yellow eyes hollow of emotion, fangs always twisting the mouth into a threat. Funny how much things could change in just a few months.

Shiro leaned one arm against the display panel, making the projected view from outside warp and dissolve. “Okay, so let’s talk next steps.”

Keith rolled his eyes, but indulged Shiro. "There's not much to talk about, not until we know more." He kept his voice low and glanced at the other Galra on the transport, each lost in their own world. “I’ll see what I can find in the archives once we dock. You take a look around the _Envoy_ , see if anything seems off.”

Look around the ship. Right. Keith didn't mean anything by it, but the words still hit Shiro like a knife to the chest. The story never changed. Keith found the information, asked the questions, heard the whispers, wiped the records. Shiro waited, and he watched, and he kept a low profile. It was necessary, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. If not for Keith, Shiro would be helpless.

He pushed away his frustrations, though, and nodded at Keith. Their system had worked so far; now wasn't the time to change it. _Calm. Patient. Play your part, Champion, and wait for the right moment to strike._

* * *

Pidge wasn’t sure what was more surprising: that Lance managed to lose the half dozen pilots on their tail, or that he managed to do so without losing his passengers.

Truth be told, Pidge hadn’t watched Lance’s flying, so they couldn’t say what exactly _had_ happened. It certainly had felt like they were always a split second away from dying, and Hunk’s commentary had bolstered that impression, but...maybe it hadn’t been that bad. Maybe Lance really was a better pilot outside the simulator.

Pidge doubted they’d find out for sure anytime soon. The stolen hoverbike had run out of gas a few hours before dawn, and Lance had set down in the middle of a system of canyons and caves out away from civilization. The good news was the Garrison wasn’t likely to find them here, not with the bike hidden away in a cave and no other signs of life for miles around.

Unfortunately, that meant no one else was likely to find them, either. They had no food, no transportation, and they were miles away from help. More than just a few miles, too, since Pidge doubted the Garrison was going to give them all a pat on the back after this. Pidge's cell had no signal, either, as they realized when they tried to get in touch with their mother. She probably wouldn't have been able to offer much immediate help, but she was the one ally Pidge had outside this cave. They hit send on their text, hoping it would catch a weak signal at some point and make it back to Carlsbad.

There was water here, at least, and it hadn’t killed Lance when he’d shoved his face into it, so they probably had at least a day or two to figure something out.

Lance and Hunk slept for a few hours, once Pidge volunteered to keep an eye out for the Garrison. Not like they’d have been able to sleep anyway, not with Matt lying two feet away—still unconscious, thanks to whatever the Garrison medics had given him, but not quite as tense as before.

Pidge combed their fingers through Matt’s hair, working out the worst of the knots. It was going to need a trim once he woke up—it hung past his shoulders now, lank and greasy--but if a overdue haircut was the worst of it, Pidge would be grateful. They'd looked him over for any obvious injuries already. There were scrapes and bruises and minor burns from his crash-landing in the desert; a long, thin gash below his collarbone, freshly sutured; and an old, ugly scar on his shin, but he seemed otherwise okay.

 _What happened to you, Matt? Where’s Dad? Where did you get that spaceship, and why did you come home_ now _?_

Pidge had so many questions, but until Matt woke up there was no point dwelling on the unknown. They found an extra pair of socks in their backpack and wet them in the stream at the side of the cave. The water trickled down the wall into a pool in the floor, then flowed deeper into the cave. Maybe it was the remnants of the river that had carved these canyons, maybe a natural spring of some kind.

Whatever the case, it gave Pidge something to do: clean Matt’s cuts, wipe the grime from his skin. Pidge wished they had some antibiotics, or even clean bandages, but anything had to be better than letting all that dust and grime fester in the cuts. Soon they would have to figure out how to get Matt real medical supplies, and some clean clothes, but this was a small step in the right direction.

Lance and Hunk woke with the sun, stiff and grumpy. Hunk grumbled something about breakfast, Lance patted his hair and whined about missing his shower, but they forgot their worries when they saw Matt.

“How’s he doing?” Hunk asked.

Pidge shrugged. “Okay, I think. I don’t know if this is still the sedative, or if he’s just tired from—god. Escaping an alien prison? I guess?”

Lance stretched his arms over his head, yawning. “So the whole alien thing is real, then?”

“Matt’s been gone for a year, and he just showed up in a _different_ ship than the one he left on. If not aliens, then what?”

“I dunno. Time travel?”

Pidge rubbed the bridge of their nose.

“So...” Hunk glanced from Pidge to Lance to Matt, then back to Pidge. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yeah.” Pidge trained their eyes on Matt, debating how much Lance and Hunk needed to know. Or...maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe they should be asking how much Lance and Hunk _deserved_ to know. They’d both risked everything to help Pidge get Matt back. If the three of them hadn’t been expelled from the Garrison yet, they would be as soon as they got back. Didn’t Pidge at least owe them the truth?

With a sigh, Pidge turned back to their teammates, then settled their gaze on a loose rock on the ground between Hunk and Lance. “My name isn’t Pidge Gunderson. Or...at least, it wasn’t always. Most people know me as Katie Holt. Matt’s my brother, and Sam Holt—the commander of the Kerberos mission—is my father.”

“And you’ve been looking for them all this time?” Hunk asked. "With the deep space scanners and everything? That's...that's really impressive."

Pidge hunched their shoulders. “I had to. The Garrison was covering something up--I knew as soon as I heard about the supposed crash. I tried searching their records at first, but I got caught in Iverson’s office too many times. He banned me from the Garrison and told everyone to keep an eye out for me. I had to become Pidge so I could get back in.” They shrugged. “So I changed my name and cut my hair and tried not to draw any attention to myself.”

“Ohhhhhh, I get it.” Lance fired a finger-gun at Pidge and smirked. “That’s why you didn’t want to hang out with me. Didn’t want to get too popular. I gotcha.”

Pidge stared at him, blinking slowly. “Something like that, sure.”

"Sounds like Matt's pretty lucky to have you--uh, is Pidge still fine, or should we call you Katie?"

"Pidge." They looked up at him, smiling shyly. "Pidge is good."

Hunk seemed content to leave it at that, for which Pidge was grateful. They were tired, and they weren’t great with people, and mostly they just wanted to be alone with their thoughts and with Matt. So when Lance got up to explore the cave and Hunk shot Pidge a questioning look, Pidge gestured for him to go with Lance.

“Someone’s gotta keep him from falling down a hole and dying,” they said as brightly as they could manage.

Hunk smiled, pulled Pidge into a quick hug, then hurried off after Lance, calling out warnings that made Lance scoff.

A few minutes later, they passed beyond Pidge’s hearing.

* * *

“They’re headed for Earth.”

Shiro stopped, halfway through his second set of pushups, and stared unseeing at the floor. _Earth._ A tremor took up in his arms, building until he had to drop to his knees to keep from collapsing.

“I checked the deployment records,” Keith went on. “The orders came in less than two hours ago.”

“Earth.”

Keith shifted his stance uncomfortably. “Yes.”

“Zarkon is going to Earth.”

“It’s not a full-scale invasion,” Keith said. “The _Predator_ isn’t equipped for that. Reconnaissance, maybe? Or there’s a resistance ship in the area. They've checked it out once or twice since they picked you up, and nothing ever came of it...” The silence stretched between them, filling the room like a balloon about to burst. Zarkon was going to Earth. Shiro knew that Keith was right; this wasn't the first time--the intel on Earth's defenses had to come from somewhere, after all. But that had all been when Shiro was still a prisoner. It was different hearing about it in the moment.

Eventually, Keith broke the silence. “I should have taken Sendak up on his offer.”

Shiro turned toward him, frowning. “What offer?”

“To dump you on someone else.” Keith’s lips twitched toward a smile. “To think I missed my one chance of _finally_ seeing Earth because I had to babysit you.”

Shiro threw a shoe at Keith, who raised an arm to block it, laughing. “You’re a terrible commanding officer.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think they assigned you to me, _Champion_?”

“I honestly have no idea. They already know I can beat you bloody.”

“Ha,” Keith said flatly. “Ha.” He tossed his bag onto the bunk across from Shiro’s. “Laugh it up while you can. Sooner or later you’ll figure out what they did, assigning you to a Legacy officer. It’s just another prison, you know. A dead end.”

A sarcastic retort rose to Shiro’s lips, only to die when he saw the look in Keith’s eyes.

 _A Legacy officer_. It was a sore subject for Keith, one of the only things Shiro was aware of that made Keith truly uncomfortable. Dragging an explanation out of Keith had been an ordeal in itself, and Shiro still sometimes felt like he was missing something.

Zarkon had ruled for the last ten thousand years; Shiro knew that much. He had no heirs, but somewhere along the way people had started calling Zarkon’s inner circle his princes. Not because they stood to replace Zarkon’s—the Galra seemed to regard Zarkon as immortal and unkillable—but because Zarkon couldn’t be everywhere at once, not with as big as the empire had grown. When he was away, he gave his Commanders, his princes, complete autonomy.

Most Galra princes earned the position through some combination of scheming and raw, brutal combat prowess. They were his best officers, the ones who refused to let anyone stand between them and power. A few, though, had inherited the position. Legacy officers, they were called—descendants of Zarkon’s original war council. As far as Shiro knew, only three families still held Legacy titles. Two of the current Legacy princes had been in power for years, long enough to prove themselves worthy of the position. They were resented by the other princes, but also respected.

Then there was Keith. His father, the previous prince, had died in battle a year ago, leaving his seventeen-year-old son to take his place.

Shiro wasn’t surprised the learn that Keith was still treated like a child playing dress-up. Although Keith was an accomplished duelist, he had yet to take part in any major battle, and Shiro was the only soldier under his command. He was small for a Galra—quick, but weak. He may have technically been a commander, but more often he was treated like a trainee.

_It’s just another prison, you know. A dead end._

Sighing, Shiro placed a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Maybe they meant it as an insult when they assigned me to you, but I got lucky. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Keith.”

Keith looked startled for a moment. He recovered quickly and shrugged off Shiro’s hand, then turned toward his bag and began to unpack. “Yeah, whatever,” he said.

He probably thought Shiro didn’t see him smile.

* * *

Matt woke slowly. The sun had cleared the horizon by now and begun to warm the canyons, Hunk and Lance had not returned, and Pidge had begun to doze against the cave wall. The sudden hitch in Matt’s breathing jolted them fully awake.

“Matt!” Bleary-eyed and stiff with fatigue, Pidge scrambled to Matt’s side. They reached out, then hesitated with one hand hovering over Matt’s shoulder. “Matt?”

A low groan built behind Matt’s teeth. He stirred, and his eyes opened. He blinked, then squinted up at Pidge. “Who… Katie?”

At the sound of his voice, the last of Pidge’s resolve shattered. They collapsed on top of Matt as he tried to sit up, eliciting a gasp of pain. Pidge snaked their arms around Matt, who stiffened only briefly before returning the embrace.

“What happened?” he asked, rubbing small circles on Pidge’s back. “Is this real? Am I...home?”

Pidge pulled back, wiping tears from their cheeks. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re home. I don’t—" They faltered, just for a moment. Then the dam broke and words tumbled over each other in a rush to get out. "You’ve been gone for a year, Matt. We didn’t know what happened to you, where you were, if you were all right. The Garrison said you'd all died, but I knew you were alive. You _had_ to be alive. And now you’re back, and--and—Matt, where’s Dad?”

A strange look had come over Matt’s face: brow furrowed, lips parted, eyes focused on something over Pidge’s shoulder. Pidge pulled back, frowning.

“Are you okay?”

Matt sat up, slowly, wincing and touching a hand to his side. Once upright, he dropped his head into his hands. He was shaking. “We were taken prisoner. There were these aliens—the Galra. They sent Dad away, they made Shiro fight in their arena. I haven’t seen either of them in—in a _long_ time. I don’t know if they’re still alive.”

“How’d you escape?”

Matt lifted his head and stared at his hands. “I don’t remember.”

He sounded terrified.

Before Pidge could take a stab at comforting him, the ground beneath their feet rumbled. Matt jerked upright, his eyes wide and white. “They’re here.”

Pidge lost their balance and fell backwards as an aftershock rippled through the cave. “They? Who’s _they_?”

Matt gave a start and looked at Pidge like he’d forgotten where he was. He swallowed, then, without answering Pidge’s question, crept toward the mouth of the cave. Pidge followed half a step behind, eyes trained on the back of Matt’s head. What did you say when your brother disappeared for a year only to crash land back on Earth with a nightmare lurking in his eyes? There was no handbook for this sort of thing. No schematic Pidge could pull up to see what was broken and how it all fit back together. Every word of comfort Pidge had stored away for when something needed to be said fell flat here. _I’m sorry you went through hell. Can I do anything to help?_

Matt stopped just inside the shadow of the cave, staring up at the sky. Pidge joined him, but didn’t see any ships overhead—Garrison _or_ alien. “Maybe it was just a rock slide?” they offered.

Matt didn’t seem to hear.

After a moment of silent debate, Pidge reached out and tugged gently on Matt’s sleeve. He looked down at their hand. Pidge had never seen their brother look so lost, so...distant. It was like a part of him was still up there in that alien prison, somewhere far beyond Pidge’s reach. “No one’s here, Matt,” Pidge said in a small voice. “Let’s head back inside.”

With one last, long look out into the canyon, Matt nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s… yeah.”

As he turned, a shadow fell over the canyon. It was like a storm had rolled in, blotting out the sun, but far more quickly than any storm cloud Pidge had ever seen. It was silent, though, the eerie silence of a horror movie right before the monster showed up and killed someone. Pidge tensed, and Matt pushed them behind him. His hand shook as it closed around Pidge’s wrist. “When I say run, you run. You hear?”

Pidge latched onto the back of Matt’s shirt. “I’m not leaving you.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, though it was obvious he didn't believe it. “You can’t let them get you.”

Pidge pushed Matt’s hand aside, drawing a startled look from him. “I’m _not_ letting anyone take you away from me again, Matt. I don’t care how many aliens I have to fight. I’m. _Not_. Leaving.”

An unfamiliar expression passed over Matt’s face. Part shock, part fear...but Pidge thought they saw pride in Matt’s eyes, too. He smiled, a small, tight smile, and Pidge grabbed a fist-sized rock off the ground. It wasn't much of a weapon, but the first alien to show its ugly face would get a nasty surprise.

Pidge wasn't expecting the lion.

It wasn't a normal lion, though that would have been strange enough out here in the New Mexico desert. No, this was a giant, blue, mechanical lion. And it was flying. Silently. More like a dream than any hovercraft Pidge had ever seen.

The lion set down with a burst of flame, lowered it’s head, and opened it’s mouth, which was big enough for a grown man to walk through without ducking. Pidge wasn’t sure whether to be scared of the thing's sheer size or awed by the tech they were almost entirely positive wasn’t from Earth.

Hunk stumbled out of the lion’s mouth, clutching his stomach and weaving on his feet. A moment later, Lance appeared behind him, practically dancing. He thumped Hunk on the back as he passed, then struck a pose for Pidge, leaning one arm against the lion’s metal snout.

“So, what do you think of my new ride? Oh, hey! Matt! You’re awake! That’s awesome. How ya feeling?”

“Uh...” Pidge glanced at Matt, who was staring intently at the lion...ship...thing. “Where...did this thing come from?”

Lance grinned. “Oh my god, Pidge, it was the coolest thing. There were these cave drawings, and they started glowing, and then the _floor_ caved in!”

“Which was terrifying,” Hunk put in. “Just, you know, for those who were wondering.”

Lance fluttered a hand at him. “Sure, yeah, okay. Terrifying. Except for the _giant lion robot_ we found down there! It’s, like, psychic or something. I barely have to control this thing.”

Pidge crossed their arms, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Psychic robot lions, huh?” Still, they couldn’t keep their eyes from drifting back to the sleek lines and neon glow of the big cat. “Some kind of AI, maybe? I wonder if my computer could connect to this thing. What do you think alien code looks like? I mean, how old do you think this thing _is_? Buried out in the desert, surrounded by _cave_ drawings? It must predate Unix by a couple of centuries, at least.” They glanced to the side of the cave, where they’d left their bag with the laptop inside. “Hey Lance. You don’t mind if I poke around in there for a while, do you?”

“What do you mean, _poke around_?” Lance squinted down at Pidge, and slowly looped an arm protectively over the lion’s nose. “You’d better not break my ship.”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “I’m not going to break anything. Just...take a look at the computers.”

“Voltron.”

Lance, who had opened his mouth to say something, paused and looked at Matt, who took one trance-like step toward the lion, his hand outstretched. His lips were parted, his eyes glassy.

Forgetting all about the alien lion and its computers, Pidge stepped toward their brother. “You know about Voltron?”

Matt blinked. “What?”

“You just called this lion Voltron. I’ve heard that word before—the transmissions I picked up on my scanner—the aliens. They kept talking about something they called Voltron. Is _this_ what they were looking for?”

“Yes.” Matt frowned. “Maybe?” He shook his head and pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. “I don’t know, it’s all so… I know the name Voltron, and it feels like this lion is connected somehow, but… I don’t know how I know that.”

Lance gaped at Matt for a second, then glanced up at the lion and rapped his knuckles on its snout. “Well, whatever you’re called, you’re awesome. Who wants to go for a ride?”

Hunk looked green. “I’ll keep my feet on solid ground for now, thanks. That thing’s worse than a roller coaster.”

Lance shrugged. “Suit yourself, man. It’s a long walk back to Carlsbad.”

As Lance disappeared inside the lion, Hunk shot Pidge a frantic look. Pidge shrugged. “He’s got a point.”

Hunk’s face fell. He groaned once, but trudged back toward the lion as Pidge collected their stuff. When they turned around, Matt was still standing outside the lion, staring up at it, a look of intense concentration on his face.

“Matt…?” Pidge came up next to him, a thousand shapeless questions in their voice.

“I’m fine, Katie,” Matt said softly. “I just...I feel like there’s something more I should know about this lion.”

“Oh.” Pidge scuffed their toe along the ground. “Is it dangerous?”

Matt’s mouth tightened. “Very. But I think that’s a good thing.”

Pidge didn’t know what to say to that. Matt had a certain tolerance for danger, like anyone who went into space for a living. He’d never sought it out, though, not the way some people did. But Matt just smiled at Pidge, ruffled their hair, and walked into the lion. And what was Pidge supposed to do?

They followed, of course. Even with Lance at the controls, it was a blue alien lion ship, and it was a way out of the desert. That was a good thing, right?

* * *

Maybe not.

The blue lion had barely pulled up out of the canyons when a streak of light appeared in the sky. Matt was the first to see it, and the first to know what it meant. Galra—the aliens Matt had only just escaped from. Pidge wasn’t sure if they’d come looking for Matt or for the lion, but either way they’d been spotted. Lance wasn’t exactly keen on getting the city of Carlsbad leveled by alien lasers, which meant that the only way out was _up_.

Five minutes later, they were at the edge of the solar system. Kerberos had fallen out of sight behind them, though Matt still had his eyes trained in that direction, as though he were expecting a shuttle to rise from the surface, Sam Holt and Takashi Shirogane on board.

The lion did at least have an impressive arsenal of weapons, so they weren’t _completely_ helpless. But, well, it was _Lance_ in the pilot’s seat, and he was no better at flying a space-lion than any other spacecraft. He got in a few decent hits on the massive battleship following them, but it was becoming increasingly clear that they needed to escape.

So when a giant, glowing blue portal opened up in empty space ahead of them, everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“What is that?” Hunk asked, hovering on the fence between scared and relieved. “A wormhole? Does that look like a wormhole to anyone else?”

Lance yanked the controls to the side, narrowly avoiding a laser blast from the ship behind them. “You know what it’s _not_? Trying to kill us.” He hesitated, glancing at Matt. “Hey, um… You’re officially the highest ranked person here, and also the only one who’s actually been to space, so… thoughts?”

Pidge bit their lip, looking between Matt and the wormhole. “You only just got back,” they whispered. “You shouldn’t have to--”

“No,” Matt said. He swallowed, but his eyes didn’t waver as he looked out through the lion’s eyes. Turning, he offered Pidge a smile. “Dad and Shiro are still out there. I wouldn’t have been able to stay on Earth knowing that. I can’t make this decision for the three of you, but if I was the only one in this lion, I’d go for it.”

Pidge smiled, then looked at Hunk, who nodded despite the nerves plain on his face. Lance seemed to be waiting for some kind of sign, so Pidge placed a hand on his shoulder.

“All right,” Lance said, adjusting his grip on the lion’s controls. “One wormhole to God knows where, coming right up.”

He dodged one last laser, then shot forward into the wormhole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can follow me on Tumblr at squirenonny.tumblr.com for updates and meta. (Check the "#voltron meta" tag for my ramblings about autistic Galra Keith and other miscellaneous headcanons.)


	2. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Matt Holt crash landed on Earth, where he was rescued by Pidge, Hunk, and Lance. The four discovered the Blue Lion and escaped the attacking Galra warship by flying into a wormhole. Meanwhile Shiro and Keith, a Galra officer, learned of Sendak's trip to Earth and resolved to find out what's going on in Zarkon's army.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features Matt's POV, and he initially uses she/her to refer to Pidge. It's brief, and I've tried to mimic the tone of the Pidge's coming out in the show--positive, accepting, and drama-free. But know that you can safely skip to the next scene break if it makes you uncomfortable for any reason.

Hunk wasn’t sure what, exactly, he’d expected to find in the big, creepy castle in the middle of nowhere. People, ideally, except that the place had obviously been abandoned for some time. Where there once had been a half dozen bridges radiating out from the castle like the spokes of a wheel, now there was mostly rubble. Only one bridge remained, which was where Lance had set down the Blue Lion.

The second set of expectations, then, was mostly dust, cobwebs, broken glass, a second layer of dust. That was what happened to places when people weren’t around to take care of them, right?

Except apparently not in space. Maybe there weren’t spiders on this planet. Or dust. Or maybe the place had a cleaning robot, like the creepy receptionist AI that greeted them all with full-body scans and a disembodied voice. Yeah, that had been a real nice first impression. Nothing horror movie about that, nuh-uh. Especially not with the lights flickering on one by one down the length of the creepy abandoned hallway.

And of course Lance had to make some quip about ghosts, just because he knew it would get to Hunk. (Not that Hunk believed in ghosts. Not really. Not on Earth, anyway. But who knew what happened to aliens when they died. Maybe aliens _did_ have ghosts. Hunk was just trying to keep an open mind.)

The one thing he definitely _hadn’t_ been expecting was two people, very much alive, if frozen in cryogenic sleep for, apparently, ten thousand years.

The first meeting had gone about as well as could be expected, considering Lance was involved: Pretty alien woman emerges from one pod, promptly collapses. Lance catches her, tries to flirt with her in his own special (terrible) way. She insults his ears, of all things, almost rips one off because she thinks he’s a threat. Pidge and Matt step in to calm the woman, while another alien emerges from the second pod and promptly engages in a mock battle with Lance.

It had been five minutes since Hunk had met his first alien, and he was already ready to go home. Seriously, how did alien biology even work? They looked human, they spoke English (maybe? Hunk _did_ notice a couple of lights like the ones that had lit up when the castle’s AI had scanned them; it was possible the castle was translating somehow—and wasn’t _that_ just a migraine and a half to try to figure out).

But that was all surface level stuff. Did aliens have viruses? Could those viruses infect humans? Could _human_ viruses infect aliens? Matt Holt seemed to be holding up just fine (all things considered), but he’d also had a year to adapt.

(Which, really, Hunk felt terrible thinking about that year as an _advantage_ the poor guy had over the rest of them. It wasn’t like he’d spent the time hanging out on alien beaches and eating gourmet alien food.)

And just in case all that wasn’t weird and _terrifying_ enough, now the aliens were talking about a war and an evil alien emperor named Zarkon (apparently the same evil alien responsible for capturing Matt and the rest of the Kerberos crew), and, oh yeah.

“Voltron.”

The woman, Princess Allura of Altea, waved her hand over the pearly nobs that controlled the ship, and a holographic image of five lions—including the blue one Lance had found underneath the canyons on Earth—merging into a giant robot-man-thing.

“Voltron is the most powerful weapon in the universe, and the _only_ thing capable of defeating Zarkon.”

Right, that was another thing. Allura sounded—what, British? Was that part of the translation software? How _was_ it translating in real time like that? Maybe that scan had implanted something into their brains, like some kind of alien brain bug. Oh, god. Hunk really did not want to think about that possibility.

“A weapon,” Matt said. He was leaning against a section of metal railing, Pidge at his side. He looked calm, mostly, but Hunk was all too familiar with the restless energy of anxiety, and _hoo boy_ did Matt have that in droves. One finger tapped relentlessly against his arm, and his eyes kept darting to each of the five doors that opened onto the...bridge, Hunk supposed.

But, hey. Hunk wasn’t about to blame Matt for being nervous. _Hunk_ was scared out of his mind right now, and he hadn’t spent a year living with hostile aliens.

Allura let the hologram fade and smiled at Matt. “It’s more of a guardian, really. Voltron was created to defend the universe, not attack.”

“Still.” Matt glanced at each door again. One, two, three, four, five, and back to Allura. “You want us to pilot these things.”

“Sounds good to me!” Lance buffed his nails on the front of his jacket. “Wouldn’t _you_ want to put this thing in the hands of the best pilots in the universe?”

Pidge scoffed. “You’re the only pilot here, Lance, and you’re _far_ from the best on Earth, let alone the universe.”

“Katie,” Matt scolded.

They pouted up at him. “What? It’s true.”

“You wound me, Pidge.” Lance clasped his hands over his heart, swooning like he’d been shot.

Allura shot a look of thin patience his way and cleared her throat. “Anyway, there are five lions that make up Voltron.” She brought up a three-dimensional map showing stars and planets, each labeled in tiny, glowing blue characters that were definitely not from Earth. Strangely, though, if Hunk looked closely, he almost felt like he could make out what they said.

 _Yep,_ he thought. _Definitely alien mind bug translating things in my head._

“The lions are… well, not exactly sentient, but something like it.” Allura rolled her hand over one of the sensors, and four model lions popped into being over four small markers. The blue and black lions were practically on top of each other, green and yellow some distance away. “Each lion seeks certain essential qualities in their pilots. The Green Lion requires an inquisitive mind, the Yellow lion a defender who puts the safety of their teammates above their own. Ultimately it's up to them to accept you, but if I might offer some guidance..."

The model of the Green Lion drifted toward Pidge. The Yellow Lion circled Hunk's head before crouching at the level of his eyes, like it wanted to have a staring contest with him. He opened his mouth to argue with Allura's "guidance," but the words didn’t make it out. Protecting people, keeping his friends safe—that sounded good. Great, even! Hunk would be proud to be that kind of person, but…

_I’m not a hero._

Hunk was a lot of things. A decent engineer. A pretty good cook. He liked to think he was a good friend, too, in general.

He was also anxious and paranoid and more likely to run from a fight than throw himself into danger, even to save a friend. He was, basically, the last person you wanted in charge of fighting a war for the fate of the universe.

True, Allura didn’t exactly have a lot of options at the moment. There were six people in this room, and five lions. If Allura or her adviser, Coran, for one reason or another, couldn’t pilot one of the lions, then by default that meant everyone else was a Paladin, and that—that was a scary thought right there. But, well, you made do with what you had.

“Hang on.” Pidge poked at the hologram of the Green Lion, which raised a paw to bat at their finger. “How can you even begin to guess which one of us gets which lion?”

A smile tugged at Allura’s lips. “Spoken like a true green paladin.” Pidge grinned sheepishly, and Allura’s smile turned wistful. “My father trained and advised the previous Paladins of Voltron, as did my grandmother before him. Our family has a special bond with the lions—enough to pilot them in the event that the true paladin cannot, enough to sense with some certainty whom a lion may choose.”

“Huh.” Pidge adjusted their glasses—a pair with the lenses removed; a second pair, this one fully intact, had emerged from the backpack shortly after they all arrived at the castle. Matt wore them now, and seemed considerably more at ease now that he could see clearly. “That’s useful.”

“It is. Matt.” Allura turned to the older boy, who looked startled to be addressed. “I believe you stand the best chance of bonding with the Red Lion. Unfortunately, we have not yet located her. With any luck, we will have more information by the time you all secure the other two lions.”

“And before the Galra get here,” Coran added helpfully from behind the princess.

Oh. Right. The Galra. Hunk had been trying _really_ hard not to think about them. No one was sure if they’d followed them through the wormhole or just somehow detected the Blue Lion from across the universe.

It didn’t really matter _how_ they’d followed them, though. They were here. A day or two away, if they were lucky (which they probably wouldn’t be.) The castle defenses would buy them some time, if they worked (which they probably wouldn’t.)

But they still needed Voltron. Badly. They’d already seen that one lion couldn’t take down an entire Galra warship.

“What about the Black Lion?” Lance asked, bending at the waist to shove his nose right up next to the hologram beside his Blue Lion.

Allura, strangely, hesitated before speaking. “I will pilot the Black Lion, at least for now. As I said, I have a bond with all the lions—not as strong as a true paladin’s bond, but enough for now. However.” She swiped her hand across the holographic display, dismissing the information of each of the lions except for Black. “As the head of Voltron, the Black Lion was given certain, _extra_ protections. She is already inside the Castle of Lions, but we won’t be able to get to her until we have all the _other_ lions already in our possession.”

“Whaaaat?” Lance dropped his head back in a dramatic groan. “That’s lame. You mean we’ve only got one lion to take with us on this fetch quest?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Coran. “And we haven’t got time to spare, so you’re going to have to split into two groups. Oh! But don’t worry. The lions are hidden on peaceful planets, so you shouldn’t have to worry about fighting.”

“I’m going with Katie.” Matt glanced at his sibling, who grinned back at him. He relaxed, then turned to Hunk and Lance as though expecting an argument.

Hunk held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not going to complain about getting the extra firepower on my team.”

“Or the extra piloting skills,” Pidge added slyly. Lance pouted at them while Hunk’s stomach did a few flips in anticipation of Lance’s flying.

“I’ll be fine,” Hunk said. “Hopefully.”

* * *

Keith hated Zarkon’s computer system.

Partially it was that all the terminals were in public spaces where Keith had to worry about people looking over his shoulder. Keith had a wrist-mounted unit of course, like all officers. It had more functionality than an ordinary soldier’s communicator, but it was a pain to type on and it couldn’t access classified systems.

Granted, Keith wasn’t looking for anything he wasn’t allowed to know. (Yet.) But he’d collected enough secrets since befriending Shiro to get them both executed slowly and with extreme prejudice. He’d decided a long time ago to maintain a certain level of paranoia on principle.

So he spent an extra ten minutes finding a computer terminal in an empty archive chamber near the stern of Torrak’s warship before he entered his credentials and navigated to the deployment records.

Then he remembered the other reason he hated these computers: they made no sense. He’d memorized the series of commands he needed to get to the most common directories, but there were so damn many of them he couldn’t sign on without getting lost at least once.

Which just made it all the more frustrating that the army recorded virtually all of its information digitally. The newer it was, the harder it was to find a printed version—and Keith mostly needed new information. On top of that, he’d neglected this part of the job for too long, which meant he was rusty, which meant it took him three tries to find what he was looking for.

The organization (or lack thereof) was problem number one with the software.

Problem number two: search functionality so broken as to be practically nonexistent. False matches, dropped results, slow processing speeds...it was usually faster to scan manually. It was _always_ more accurate. Seriously, had Zarkon updated his computers at _all_ in the last ten thousand years? With a sigh of resignation, Keith got to work.

Unfortunately, Zarkon had a _lot_ of ships in his armada. Ten thousand years of expansion and a domain covering half the known universe would do that. Keith had been at this for almost an hour without finding anything. His eyes were dry, his neck stiff from leaning in close to read the tiny print.

He’d gone back almost a year in the records with no luck, and was starting to wonder how far he should take it. The question had first come up twenty minutes ago, when his eyes started to bother him, but he’d been deep in the rhythm of the search by then, and his momentum had kept him going until his eyes felt ready to shrivel up in their sockets.

And yet he’d found nothing.

It was as baffling as it was frustrating. Keith knew the Galra had been to Earth at least once. Most of their information had come from interrogating the Kerberos crew, but not all of it. The archives held snippets of Earth transmissions, images of the surface and of human spacecraft, and a few megabytes of personal records Shiro said had come from “social media.”

So why wasn’t there any record of that mission?

Keith had assumed the Kerberos mission was the empire’s first contact with Earth. He’d certainly never heard of anything happening in the region _before_ the capture of a new species—and Keith could recite nearly everything the Galra knew about Earth. If the archives had indicated prior knowledge, Keith would remember. But now that date was several months behind him, and...nothing.

And then, he saw it.

2065.234, -8246.891, -0597.206, C

Earth.

For a moment Keith just stared at the screen, blinking slowly. For all he’d been looking for those exact coordinates, part of Keith was surprised to find them. He checked the date. Almost two years ago.

Keith checked the date again, then the coordinates. He hadn’t read either wrong. A single ship, reconnaissance class—the smallest class, manned by just two or three soldiers—had been sent to Earth almost two years ago, well before the Kerberos mission.

The door to the archives room hissed open. Keith tensed, every sense angling toward the door for signs of a threat, though he resisted the urge to turn or move to shield his screen. That would only raise suspicions.

“Pardon me, Commander. I didn’t realize you were in here.”

Keith recognized the voice—a voice that, despite the respectful words, sounded somewhat hostile. Keith turned slowly, keeping a straight face, and looked up at Lieutenant Karna. Karna was a tall, meaty man, even for a Galra. Standing in the doorway, his shoulders brushed the wall on either side, and the thin, fleshy ears atop his head brushed the top of the door.

“At ease, Lieutentant.” Keith tried to keep his voice forceful, the kind of voice that commanded respect. He always seemed to be missing something, somehow. Some unspoken cue that told other people who was in charge. It didn’t help that he had to crane his neck to look up at Karna—more than usual, as Keith was still seated by the computer terminal. People always said you could project authority by forcing someone to remain standing while you sat; Keith didn’t get that. He didn’t feel like an authority figure asserting his position, more like a new recruit cowering before an angry officer.

Karna saluted half-heartedly, then strode into the room. Did his eyes linger too long on Keith’s screen? The need to close out of the deployment records, to get out of the room before Karna figured out what he was up to (or worse, why), scratched at Keith’s skin.

Instead, he turned back to the screen and slowly scrolled down a few more lines. Once Karna had settled in at a terminal of his own, Keith called up a memo on his communicator and copied down the date and ship’s ID of the mission to Earth.

After that he backed out of the deployment records, but spent another several minutes scrolling through other directories, making note of random entries from several other screens, just in case Karna—or anyone else—was paying attention. Only then did he log off and head for the door.

Before he could leave, Karna spoke up.

“You were assigned to Sendak’s ship before this, weren’t you?”

Keith paused, his hand on the door controls. “That’s right. And?”

“Nothing.” There was a smirk in Karna’s voice, and Keith turned, scowling.

“Don’t waste my time, Lieutenant. What are you getting at?”

Karna looked up, the red glow of the computer display giving his eyes a fiery sheen. “I was just wondering what it felt like to be shuttled out of the way. Like a child playing soldier.”

Bristling, Keith turned fully around. His ears lay flat against the side of his head, and he bared his fangs. “Watch your tongue, Karna. I may not command this ship, but I still outrank you.”

“Of course, sir. My apologies.”

The man made no attempt to disguise the condescension in his voice. He was a seasoned soldier, at least twice Keith’s age, and Keith was suddenly struck by the absurdity of him— _him—_ acting like he had any authority over Karna.

Karna seemed to sense the same thing, and pressed on despite his feigned contrition. “You should have taken the chance to dump that useless lump of flesh you call a soldier.”

“You mean the human?”

“A waste of space,” Karna spat. “Take my advice, _Commander_. If you want to get anywhere in the Empire, the way to do that is through battles, _not_ playing jail-keeper for an alien who’s going to slit your throat the first chance he gets.”

Keith’s heart was pounding in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to punch Karna in the face, or challenge him to a duel--but he restrained himself, as he'd been doing for the last three months. He couldn't afford to draw attention to himself.  _Shiro_ couldn't afford for him to draw attention to himself. Besides, this wasn't the _Predator._ The crew here hadn't had time to grow complacent with Shiro's presence. They had no reason to accept his professed loyalty.

A smile formed on Keith’s lips, taut and dangerous. “Haggar has a personal investment in this human,” he said. “And that makes the payoff vastly overshadow whatever glory there is to be won in one pitiful battle.” Karna’s face soured, and Keith’s smile turned just a bit more genuine. “I’d say that’s worth any risk. Wouldn’t you, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” Karna said, with no more respect than before—but perhaps just a bit more curiosity.

Keith didn’t let himself worry whether that was good or not. He palmed the door controls and put as much distance as possible between him and Lieutenant Karna.

* * *

Matt was pleasantly surprised by the planet he and Katie found on the other side of the wormhole. It was bright and green and sunny, covered in a lush jungle ringing with birdsong. The handheld tracker Allura had given them led them to a wide, clear river.

“I didn’t know alien planets could be so...peaceful.”

If Matt had thought about the words before they left his mouth, he would have swallowed them, because now Katie was looking at him the way Shiro used to, back when they'd first heard about the Arena. She looked at him like she was waiting for him to break.

Matt caught sight of a canoe down by the water and nodded toward it, hoping to distract Katie with thoughts of the Green Lion. It didn’t work quite as well as he’d hoped, but the seven foot tall sloth creature that suddenly appeared beside him did. With a yelp, Katie was sitting on Matt's shoulders, fingers twisting at his hair. He would have complained about her scaling him like a bony jungle gym except that he was holding her legs tight enough that his finger nails were going to leave divots.

Once it became obvious that the sloth-thing had no intention of hurting them, Katie climbed down and the two of them—three with the sloth—climbed into the boat.

It was quiet for a few minutes as the alien guided them down the river, past occasional carvings of lions that glowed green at their approach. Katie looked around in wonder, Allura’s tracking device sitting ignored on her lap. Matt smiled at the back of her head, then turned to take in the jungle sliding past on either side of the river.

“Hey. Matt?”

Katie had gone quiet, staring down at the tracking device. She carried her tension in her shoulders, just like their mother did. Even from behind, Matt knew she was worried.

He had a feeling he knew why, too.

But he kept his voice light as he asked, “What is it?”

“Are you…?” She hesitated, turned toward Matt, though she kept her eyes down. Matt felt something inside him shrivel up. He knew his sister wasn’t a fan of eye contact, but she could fake it when she wanted. When she wanted to have a real, deep conversation, though, she didn’t even make an attempt.

Katie’s fingers fumbled with the worn hem of her sleeve. “How are you doing?”

Though Matt had been expecting the question, it still hit him like a fist to the gut. Breathing, for a moment, was beyond him, and his eyes burned with unshed tears. He forced a smile before Katie noticed anything. She was thirteen—no, probably fourteen by now. How long _had_ he been gone?--She shouldn’t have to worry about her older brother’s mental health.

The worst part was, at least one corner of his mind was _glad_ someone was offering a shoulder to cry on. He needed someone to take away this awful pressure. He _needed_ someone to tell him it was going to be okay.

But not Katie.

“I’m doing good,” he said. “Honestly. I’ve found you, haven’t I? And we’re about to find magic lion mechas and save the universe.”

“But...the Galra...”

Matt put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s all behind me now,” he said, and wished it felt less like a lie.

Katie looked unconvinced.

“Seriously.” He squeezed her shoulder again, tapping twice with his little finger. An old habit, one he’d half forgotten. His body remembered, though, and so did Katie. _I’m here,_ those taps said. _I’m not going anywhere._ She smiled at him. “I’m doing fine, Katie, and it’s only going to get better from here.”

Her smile faltered.

Matt dropped his hand and leaned back, studying her. “What?”

“Nothing.”

One thing Matt knew about Katie: she could hide things like no other. Lies of omission? She could keep them up indefinitely. Repeating the same lie? That imbued it with a certain momentum, and Katie could ride that wave to the end of time.

It was when she _thought_ about lying that she tripped herself up.

So when she mumbled her denial and tucked her head down by her shoulders, Matt knew two things. First, that something really had upset her. Second, that she had _chosen_ not to tell Matt the truth.

He didn’t let that thought sting. Katie was a private person. She didn’t like people intruding on her life, and she didn’t like spreading her problems around. Once upon a time, Matt wouldn’t have needed her to tell him; one look and he would know what was wrong.

Well, the happily ever after to that story had crashed and burned when the Galra showed up, but that didn’t mean Matt had to stop reading the things Katie wouldn't say.

It had been a sudden change, a genuine smile interrupted by something he’d said. _I’m doing fine, Kaite, and it’s only going to get better from here._ Was she thinking about Voltron? The Galra? The war they’d somehow gotten themselves recruited for? God, she was only fourteen. Or—wait.

Oh.

“Your friends call you Pidge.”

Katie’s—no, Pidge’s head snapped up, eyes darting to Matt’s, then wandering away. “I had to disguise myself to get into the Garrison. Iverson caught me hacking his computer too many times. Lance and Hunk always knew me as Pidge Gunderson. I was just...just some guy in their class.”

“And?”

Pidge’s fingers fumbled with that worn hem again, sliding back and forth. Back and forth. “I don’t know. I—I kind of liked it, being Pidge. It felt right—or, well, I dunno. As right as Katie ever did. I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but Pidge was who _I_ wanted them to be, not who I’d just sort of fallen into. Does that make sense? I don’t know, Matt, it was a long year, and I had bigger things to worry about! You and Dad disappeared, and Iverson kept lying to us, and then there was the whole alien thing, and now I’m in _space_ about to be a _pilot_ , which I mean, that’s cool. I always wanted to be a pilot. But also weird? I don’t know how to be a pilot. I don’t even know how to take care of a cat! I'm sorry. I shouldn't be dumping this on you. You've only been back for like five hours; you should have to worry about little things like this yet. We should just focus on the lions and then we can--”

“Pidge.”

Pidge fell silent, the rhythm of fingers against fabric slowing.

“Can I tell you something I learned in the Galra prisons?”

Pidge’s eyes widened. Matt thought maybe it was fear, or worry, about what he was going to say. But Pidge just nodded silently, listening with a tilted head and restless fingers.

Matt leaned forward, dropping his voice low. “Gender is really freaking confusing.”

Pidge’s hands stilled. “What?”

“It is. Did you know some alien cultures have four or five genders? Heck, there are probably some with more!” Matt lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I'm no expert, Pidge. I still get confused. It's fine if you haven't figured everything out yet, it's fine if a few weeks from now you want to go by Katie again, or another name. But don't ever feel like you have to pretend to be someone you're not for my sake. Okay?” He reached out one hand toward Pidge, but they were faster, arms snaking around his waist.

Pidge buried their face in Matt’s chest, and Matt could feel their smile through the fabric of his shirt. “Thanks, Matt.”

Matt wrapped his arms around Pidge and kissed the top of their head. “There’s nothing to thank me for. Now let’s go get your lion.”

* * *

“You’re sure it was _before_ the Kerberos mission.”

Keith resisted the urge to groan. “For the tenth time, _yes_. Shiro, we figured out the conversion from the Galran date system to yours ages ago. I know you remember.”

“I remember you wouldn’t stop bugging me about it until we did,” Shiro said with a hint of a smile, though he barely lifted his gaze from the display screen of Keith’s wrist unit, which was draped across the storage chest so they could both see it.

Keith gave Shiro a look to show him how unamused he was. “You and your crew were picked up on August seventeenth by your calendar. You left Earth on June fifth. This ship was deployed to the third planet in your solar system on October eleventh of the previous year.”

The smile slid from Shiro’s face. He read Keith’s note once more—for all the good it did him. The deployment records only cataloged basic data, and Keith hadn’t even copied all of it. After a moment, Shiro leaned back against his bunk and sighed.

“If they’d already found Earth, then Kerberos...”

Keith nodded. “It makes sense, if you think about it. I always assumed it was just a coincidence, but why go out of their way to pick up three random aliens? You aren’t even that impressive as a species.”

“Watch it,” Shiro warned, a teasing note in his voice.

With a laugh, Keith flopped backward onto his bunk. “All I’m saying is, it’s more reasonable to assume they knew what they were doing when they took you. Maybe they’d set up base on Kerberos and didn’t want you stumbling across it. Maybe they were waiting for Earth to send out a shuttle so they could capture the crew and get more information on your people. Either way it--”

“Makes perfect sense,” Shiro finished. He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah.” He sounded tired suddenly, and Keith sat up to watch him.

“You okay?”

Shiro waved a hand. “Just...concerned. If the Galra knew about Earth before I was captured, that means they may have already made their move.”

“They haven’t,” Keith said. He stood and stepped toward Shiro, his arms spread wide. “It's only been recon, and now Sendak’s ship. No one else has gone near Earth.”

“Can we be sure about that? It might not be in the archives.”

“Everything is in the archives.” Keith crossed his arms and stared at his personal computer as though it might offer up some answers. “Zarkon lets his commanders run themselves, but everyone knows that if he asks for records and you can’t provide them, you’re as good as dead.”

For a long while, Shiro stared hard at the floor, his arms crossed. His fingers tapped against the metal surface of his right arm.

Then he pushed himself upright and headed for the door. “We need more information.”

Keith followed him into the corridor. “Shiro, what are you doing?”

“Improvising.”

“That’s _my_ job. And you complain about it.”

“I only complain because I’m afraid you’ll get caught and we’ll both wind up dead.”

Souring, Keith slouched down. “Thanks.”

“It’s okay, though.” Shiro raised a fist over his shoulder, and Keith awkwardly tapped his own fist against it, a knee-jerk reaction to a gesture he'd never seen from anyone but Shiro. It was apparently a camaraderie thing among humans. “I just won’t get caught.”

* * *

Claiming the Green Lion was astoundingly simple. The sloth alien rowed Matt and Pidge to a bend in the river where the current slowed to a crawl. They climbed out, hiked for a minute or two, and found themselves looking up at a vine-covered pyramid. Pidge scrambled to the top, where they stopped, looking around in consternation.

Matt was just about to come help them look when a fountain of green light exploded from within the temple.

Even after everything he’d been through, Matt had to admit it was worth it to see the way Pidge’s face lit up. The light shone through the vines beneath their feet, the wind caught their hair. Their eyes turned to find Matt on the ground below, and they wore that lopsided grin Matt missed more than Earth itself.

Yeah. Matt was glad he was here to see this.

He piloted the Altean pod back to the Castle of Lions while Pidge flew their lion. Hunk and Lance had, apparently, not yet returned, so Matt made his way to the bridge to wait while Pidge lingered in the hangar to study the lion.

“Hello, Matt.” Allura smiled at him from her place at the controls, but the expression looked strained. She’d closed the wormhole that had taken Matt and Pidge to the Green Lion, but had to maintain the other until Hunk and Lance returned. Coran, who had greeted Matt and Pidge in the hangar, had been on his way to the kitchens to get Allura something called nunvill, which apparently would help keep her energy up. “Welcome back. I trust everything went well?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, joining her. “No problems at all. Pidge is a natural at this.”

“Excellent news! And while you were gone, we located the Red Lion.”

For a moment, time stood still. “Oh,” he said. “That’s...great.”

Allura frowned at him, her eyebrows drawing down. The pink markings beneath her eyes somehow made her expression seem more accusatory than it was. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just...” Matt drew in a long breath. There _was_ something wrong, that was the whole reason he’d sought out Allura, but he hadn’t expected it would come up so quickly. _Just say it._ He opened his mouth… and chickened out. “Nothing. I’ll deal with it.”

Silence answered this statement. Matt hadn’t noticed how quiet the bridge was until now. It set his teeth on edge and raised the fine hairs along the back of his neck. There wasn’t any reason it _shouldn’t_ be quiet, really. All there was here was the computer, or whatever it was Allura was operating with those two pedestals. Occasionally the display screen ahead would let out a little blip.

Other than that...nothing. No air in vents, no water in pipes, no hum of electronics. He doubted any of this really counted as electronics, though. It seemed to run on magic more than circuits. Still, he’d grown used to the sound of a ship’s engine, circulating air, running water, whispers and moans of pain, people crying in the darkness. He hadn’t been truly alone since--

 _He sat in darkness, limbs trembling from beating on the walls for hours—for_ days _. How long had he been here? He’d fought until he ran out of strength, and then he'd screamed, and now… Now he waited._

_His leg throbbed, and something warm wetted the fabric of his pants. Blood. The cut on his shin had reopened while he threw himself at the steel door._

_His thoughts turned to Shiro. Was he even still alive? Matt hadn’t seen him since that day in the Arena, when Shiro had attacked him—saved him—taken his fate. Died for him, maybe._ God _, let him not be dead._

_Matt didn’t even know what he should be feeling right now—anguished that Shiro had saved him from one hell, only for him to wind up in another. Or vindicated because at least Shiro wasn’t the only one suffering._

_...He’d been alone for so long. Someone delivered food to him every day, but they said nothing, and in the darkness he couldn’t make out a face or even a hand. Other than that, nothing. No punishment, no interrogation, no labor._

_No one and nothing but silence and darkness and a hollow ache in his chest as his thoughts turned toward home._

_He lay on his side, hugging his injured leg to his chest and begging for an end, for sunlight, for conversation. Why had they brought him here? Why keep him alive if they were just going to leave him in a cell to rot?_

_A metallic scratch broke the silence. Something rattled,_ _and then there was an electronic chirp_ _. The door hissed and opened, and Matt raised a hand against the sudden assault of light._

“Matt?”

Allura started to step away from her controls but stopped, a look of frustration crossing her face as she glanced at the wormhole visible in the sky outside.

“Sorry,” Matt gasped, pressing a hand to the side of his face. His palm was icy and slick with sweat, or else his face was feverishly hot. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Allura relaxed back toward the controls, watching him like a wild animal that might attack or bolt at any moment. And why shouldn’t she look at him like that? He was a mess! His hands shook, and his breath still rattled in his ears. He felt like he’d just run a marathon.

Matt shook his head, brushing his hair off his forehead and twisting his face into a smile. “I’m fine. Just got a little dizzy for a second there. Must be the air here or something.”

“Right….” Allura watched him for several seconds. Even twisted so that her hands stayed on the twin pedestals, she looked every bit the princess she was. Graceful and poised—but ready to fight at a moment’s notice. “You can talk to me, Matt. I’m sure this is all very sudden for you—getting ripped away from your home, caught up in this battle. I’m truly sorry.”

A laugh escaped Matt’s throat, cutting Allura off. “If you knew what I’d been through, you wouldn’t be apologizing.”

Those blue eyes seemed to pierce him, uncomfortably intense. It was like Allura could size him up in a glance, then turn him inside out and leave him floundering.

“Perhaps not,” she finally said. “Still. I understand that I’m asking a lot of you—of all of you. I want you all to know you can come to me with your concerns.”

Well, there it was. A nice little invitation to lay his problems at her feet. Matt had tried to resist, but _god_ would it feel good to let out this ugly knot of emotions he’d been carrying around all day.

So he took a deep breath, released it, and ripped the band aid off: “I can’t be the red paladin.”

Allura’s eyes widened minutely. “You—what? Matt, I know this is sudden, but--”

“It’s not the suddenness.” Matt threaded his fingers through his hair—hastily cut with a knife Pidge found in the hangar—and huffed. “I can’t fight—I’m not a pilot, I’m not… They broke me. Maybe before all this I was-I was stronger. Better. But they took me and they battered me down, and I’m not what I used to be. I _can’t_ _be_ what you’re asking me to be.”

“Yes, you can. You are so much more than you believe yourself to be,” Allura said gently. Matt wished he could just wipe that look of pity off her face. “You have it in you to be great, Matt, even if you can’t see it.”

“You’re wrong.” The words were quiet, and Allura frowned. Gritting his teeth, Matt repeated himself, more firmly this time. “You’re _wrong_. I’m not a paladin. I’m not—not anything. The Galra tried to make me fight and I choked. Shiro had to save me.” He reached down to his leg, scarred and weak from months of confinement. He didn’t trust his body to hold him up in the first place; there was no telling what his injured leg would do if he put too much strain on it. “With all due respect, Your Highness… If I’m the best you have, then we’ve already lost this war.”

The ache in his leg was only a memory, he knew, but his body still felt heavy. Too heavy for a leg that had never had a chance to heal. He turned toward the door, intent on getting away before Allura saw how weak he really was.

Her voice stopped him. “You’re right.”

Matt turned. “What?”

“You’re right. This war, it’s—regardless of who we had to pilot the lions, five people cannot hope to defeat Zarkon alone. I know that, but I cannot give in without even trying. You may feel you aren’t up to the task—none of us may be up to the task—but we have to try.”

“Even if it’s hopeless?”

She smiled. “Nothing is hopeless, Matt. Not entirely, not unless you refuse to try.” She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Alteans believe in peace first, so I will not compel you or anyone to fight.”

“But you will remind me that if I refuse, I’ve basically killed us all.”

Allura looked unsettled at that. “No,” she said firmly. “I only ask you to give yourself the credit you deserve. You survived a year in Zarkon’s hands. You escaped from them, and made your way home. You say they broke you, yet here you are.”

Matt held up a hand to forestall the inspirational speech that he knew was brewing. “Don’t get me wrong, your Highness. Wherever the Red Lion is, I’ll go, if only because I know Pidge will be there and I can’t lose another member of my family. I just want you to know that, even if I _do_ try, the Red Lion will never accept me.” He stepped backward, the door opening at his approach. “You might want to figure out a backup plan.”


	3. The Red Lion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Matt, Pidge, Lance, and Hunk arrived at the Castle of Lions, where they met Allura and Coran, who sent them off to find their lions. After returning with Pidge and the Green Lion, Matt informed Allura that he doubted his ability to pilot the Red Lion. Meanwhile Keith discovered that the Galra first visited Earth a year before the Kerberos mission. The only question is, why?

Lance and Hunk arrived back on Arus forty minutes after Matt and Pidge, which was pushing the limits of Allura’s ability to maintain the wormhole. Matt dragged Pidge out of the hangar where they’d been examining the Green Lion, and the whole team gathered on the bridge with Allura, who had traded her dress for a lightweight suit of armor, white with black accents over a black bodysuit.

“Well that was hell,” Lance announced as he stepped into the room. Hunk emerged from the next elevator over looking more than a little nauseous.

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “Rough trip?”

Lance muttered something in Spanish. Matt didn't understand the words, but the tone was as bitter as oversteeped tea, which said enough in itself.

“What he said,” Hunk groaned.

Matt stared at each of them in turn. Both looked shaken, Lance a little rumpled, like he’d been knocked around. No blood, though. No obvious signs of pain.

Suddenly Matt realized what he was doing and looked away, face flaming. They were fine. _Fine_. The Voltron Lions were the universe’s strongest weapons; if these kids weren’t safe inside their Lions, then they weren’t safe anywhere. _Stop panicking over nothing._

Pidge laughed at something Hunk said, and Matt forced himself to breathe. This wasn’t like before. He wasn’t alone, unarmed, unprepared. It was going to be fine.

“A bit of bad news, Paladins,” said Coran, interrupting Lance. “The Galra are here.”

So much for breathing. “ _What_? I thought we had a couple days before they reached us!”

Coran called up a digital model of the planet. A red symbol hovered just outside the atmosphere. “Ah, sorry. Slight miscalculation on my part. I’m afraid we’ve got a warship knocking on our door—though, positive thinking time! They have the Red Lion on board, which means we have the opportunity here to kill two fetlocs with one laser! Or, well, kill one and steal the other.”

“We don’t have much time,” Allura said, smoothly stepping in as Coran reworked his metaphor. “Sendak, the commander of that warship, has threatened to destroy Arus if we don’t hand over the Lions. We need to stop him and get to the Red Lion as quickly as possible. Follow me.”

She led them down to the castle’s mid levels, where corridors branched off to the peripheral towers and the Lions’ hangars. Matt trailed a few steps behind the others. The temperature inside the castle seemed to have dropped, sparking tremors deep in Matt’s bones.

This had to be some kind of cruel nightmare. Less than a day of freedom, and now he was walking straight back into Galra hands. He knew he wasn’t lucky enough to hope for a second escape.

In the armory they found suits like Allura’s, one for each of them in the color of their Lions. Matt had seen a lot of alien tech, but the self-fitting clothes might have been the most impressive. Pidge should have been swimming in their armor, and Hunk had voiced his concern about fitting into his at all, but when they were changed, it looked as though the armor had been made for them.

Matt, meanwhile, was just happy to change out of the rags he’d been wearing.

After the armor, Allura gave them their weapons, which she called bayards. The bayards were compact devices that could be stowed in their armor as a form of energy called Quintessence and which took on a different shape for each of them. Sniper rifle, laser cannon, electrified dagger, and for Matt a laser pistol. It wouldn’t pack the same punch as Hunk’s gun, or have the accuracy of Lance’s, but it was small enough that Matt could wield it single-handedly, which meant he could simultaneously use the energy shield built into his armor. Allura, apparently, would have to make do without a weapon. When Lance asked what kind of weapon she had (his exact words were more suggestive than that, but the others had tacitly agreed not to encourage him), she said only that the black bayard had been lost with its previous owner and not to worry about her.

And then she was shuttling them off to the hangars so they could fly off to meet the Galra warship.

Matt was going to be sick.

“The Galra don’t know we have the Green Lion,” Allura said, clinging to the back of Pidge’s seat. Matt stood at Pidge’s other shoulder, watching as Arus fell away beneath them. “Hunk, Lance, you two are going to pretend to surrender your lions as a distraction so the three of us can sneak on board. Once we’re in, find a way to disable the ship’s cannon.”

“Be a decoy, then smash things up,” Lance said over the coms. “Easy, peasy.”

“Lance, I hate to be a downer,” said Hunk, “but you already tried that once today, and it almost got you killed.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Pssh. That was just a warm-up! Besides, there’s two of us now.”

“And like a million of them.”

“We’ll be fine.”

Pidge broke away from the other Lions as they left Arus’s atmosphere behind. “No one’s gonna die,” they said. “These things got us from Earth to Kerberos in a matter of seconds. No one’s even going to be able to catch you.”

Hunk hesitated. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess.”

Allura leaned forward. “Trust your lions, paladins. They will keep you safe.”

That seemed to calm Hunk, and Lance outright grinned as he gave Blue more power and shot toward the warship. Matt seemed to be the only one who didn’t find Allura’s words comforting. Trust the lions. Sure. They were only dangerous, semi-sentient alien weapons. Nothing to worry about.

Matt really was going to be sick.

The Green Lion landed on the belly of the Galra warship. Pidge, Matt, and Allura sealed their helmets and maneuvered to the hull of the ship—a difficult task since they had to steer with boosters on their backs. Everything about the armor seemed to be psychically activated. Allura said it was brain wave recognition software, but it boiled down to the same thing. Just think about what you want to do. If that doesn’t work, think _harder_.

Matt’s bad leg throbbed as he slammed against the hull. _It’s all in your head_ , he told himself. _Just don’t think about it._

Lance may have made fun of Pidge’s weapon (at least until they electrocuted him with it), but it was nothing to trifle with. The ship’s hull—three inches of solid metal—might as well have been tissue paper. It took Pidge only a few seconds to cut through, and then they were inside.

Stepping through the hole was like stepping into the past. Blank metal corridors, lit a ghostly purple. The light came from everywhere and from nowhere, always too bright for sleep, yet too dim to see into the corners of rooms.

_Take care of your father._

Someone touched Matt’s arm. He flinched away, biting down on a cry of alarm. It was Pidge. Only Pidge.

“What’s wrong?” they asked.

Matt screwed his eyes shut. One breath, two. Shove the memories away. He waited until the surge of panic subsided, until he thought he could open his eyes without being back in the cells waiting to be dragged to the Arena.

When he opened his eyes, Pidge and Allura were trading worried looks. Maybe Allura was starting to reconsider her high opinion of him. _A little late for that_ _, Princess_.

“Sorry,” he said, drawing the attention of both his companions. “I’ve...been here before.”

Pidge sucked in a breath. “What? Does that mean Dad’s here?”

“No.” Another deep breath. Matt’s eyes were drawn to the corridor to the right. He’d been carried that way, semi-conscious, when he was first captured—and then dragged out kicking and screaming on the day Shiro entered the Arena. “They sent Dad away somewhere, not long after we were picked up. But Shiro was still here when I left.”

He took a step toward the cells, only for Allura to pull him back.

“Let me go,” he growled.

“No.” Allura tightened her grip on his arm as he struggled, and then she yanked him back with more strength than he’d given her credit for. “You _must_ get to the Red Lion.”

Matt grit his teeth. “I _told_ you, I’m not a paladin.” Pidge’s small sound of dismay cooled his anger slightly, and he shot an apologetic look their way. “I’m sorry, Pidge, but I’m not. Allura, you said you have a bond with all the lions, right? That means you can pilot Red! Just let me go look for Shiro.”

“I’m sorry, Matt.” Allura pivoted, placing herself between Matt and the prisoners’ cells. “The Red Lion has always been the most temperamental. If there’s one I cannot pilot, it will be her. I do not have the qualities required to be the red paladin, but I believe you _do_.”

 _You’re wrong._ Matt knocked Allura’s arm aside. He didn’t care that it was rude. He didn’t care she was a princess and the closest thing he had to a commanding officer right now. Shiro could be a hundred feet away from him; he needed to _move_.

Allura’s expression softened. “Pidge and I will get the prisoners and escort them to safety. If your friend is there, we _will_ save him. But the Red Lion is something only you can do. Your team is counting on you.”

It was an order, without being an order. Matt hesitated—doubly so now because he didn’t want to let Pidge out of his sight.

“Allura’s right,” Pidge said, tapping their bayard against their leg. “You’re the red paladin, Matt, I know it.” They looked up, grinning. “We’ll get Shiro. You go get your lion.”

Matt had never been able to say no to Pidge. “Fine.” He jabbed a finger toward Allura. “But if you let anything happen to Pidge, _anything_ \--”

“Maaaatt,” Pidge whined. “I’ll be _fine._ ” They gave him a shove away from the cells. “Go get Red.”

With one last look down the length of the dim corridor, Matt turned and hurried away. _You’d better be all right, Shiro._

* * *

The conversation in the commissary died the instant Shiro walked in with Keith. Keith’s steps slowed, at least until Shiro nudged him. _Act normal_ , Shiro wanted to say. _Don’t let them see we’ve noticed_. Maybe it didn’t matter. More likely than not, it didn’t matter.

It was just that Shiro had spent so long putting on an act, he didn’t know how to stop. One misstep and he would be back in the Arena—if they didn’t execute him outright.

Thankfully, Keith knew how to follow Shiro’s lead by now. (Ironic, since Keith so vastly outranked him.) He may not be the political mastermind so many Galra officers seemed to be, but he had a phenomenal poker face, and there weren’t many things he refused to do for the sake of keeping their secret and bringing down Zarkon.

Like stalk right up to the most crowded table, shove a soldier off his seat to clear space for Shiro, then sit down and start eating like it was nothing.

Shiro looked around the table warily. It was all well and good that Keith could ignore the murderous glares fired off toward him, but Shiro felt like he was about to get eviscerated as he took the seat Keith had cleared for him. All the more so because he was the biggest nobody on this ship. Unlike Sendak, Torrak didn’t maintain an Arena on his ship. There were occasional prisoners held in the bowels of the ship, but these were quickly sentenced or transferred. No one here knew Shiro as Champion—or as Haggar’s latest experiment.

He clenched his right fist, grimacing at the familiar tingling sensation where Galra tech met human flesh. His opinion of the prosthetic changed on a daily basis. When he was gracious enough to acknowledge that the tech was one of the only things that had allowed him to survive this long, he felt grudgingly grateful for it. The rest of the time, when he remembered what they’d done to him in order to wire this thing into him, when he remembered what _else_ they'd given him along with the arm, he just wanted to cut it off and eject it into deep space.

For now, he didn’t let himself have an opinion on it. It was the weapon that kept these Galra guessing. Without the arm—clearly Galra tech of high degree—he was just a prisoner of war who had pledged himself to Zarkon to escape the Arena. He might be the first they’d met, but not the first they’d heard of.

But that arm...the arm said somebody powerful had a stake in Shiro. The arm said that anyone stupid enough to kill him might not live to regret it.

He rested it on the table and ate with his left hand, meeting the eye of the soldiers who risked an open stare, while Keith kept his head down beside him. The others probably assumed Keith was ignoring them all; he had a reputation as someone who didn’t care about the world outside his own head.

Shiro knew better. Keith was watching, and listening, even more intently than Shiro. Since discovering the reconnaissance ship that had visited Earth two years ago, Keith had been convinced something more was going on. Either Sendak’s urgent orders were more than they appeared, or else it was just the first step in a larger plan. Either way, according to Keith, someone on board the _Envoy_ knew the truth. Keith wanted to bug the bridge or corner Torrak and beat answers out of him, but at Shiro’s request he had agreed to less overtly mutinous options for the time being.

Less overt apparently meaning forcibly inserting himself into conversations in hopes of overhearing something.

Shiro was fond of the kid—surprisingly so, given the fact that they’d first met as enemies on the floor of the Arena—but good _lord._ He had all the subtlety of a chainsaw, and the temperament of a wet cat. Asking him to extract information from a bunch of soldiers hadn’t exactly been Shiro’s most ingenious plan—but then, would Shiro really have been any better at it? Even aside from the fact he was a human, he’d always been candid. Keeping secrets was one thing. Charming secrets out of someone else?

This was going to be painful.

“So...” one of the Galra soldiers began. He shot a look at his captain, a sour-looking woman who snorted derisively and bent lower over her slop. The soldier returned his attention to Keith. “This is your first time on the _Envoy_ , isn’t it? Er—sir.”

The look Keith gave him made the young Galra swallow his last words. In all honesty, the two were probably about the same age, but the soldier obviously recognized the rank sigil on Keith’s armor. He probably didn’t know how to react. Commanders didn’t eat dinner with the regular soldiers; none of the superior officers did.

Commanders also, typically, weren’t eighteen years old and accompanied only by a human who was too busy watching the Galra around him for signs of aggression to eat his own food.

“Yes, it is my first time here.” Keith’s words were neutral, almost polite. Completely at odds with his expression, which seemed to ward off conversation with a butcher knife. (It was probably unintentional on Keith’s part, but the atmosphere at the table had taken a turn for the frigid with their arrival.) “I’ve been stationed on the _Predator_ since my... promotion.”

Another soldier nodded in understanding. “So that’s why you transferred. Didn’t want to let your pet get too close to--”

Someone silenced him with a kick under the table that made the soldier jump and all the dishes rattle. Keith stared at him blankly. “Too close to what?”

The soldier stammered a non-response while everyone else at the table studied their food intently. Shiro snuck a glance at Keith. He knew that implication sometimes eluded Keith. He also knew that Keith feigned ignorance at least as often as he let his honest confusion show; even after three months of living with him Shiro still couldn’t reliably tell which was which.

When no one offered a response to Keith’s question for several painful seconds, Keith moved on as though nothing had happened.

“To be honest, I’ve been looking to get off that floating hovel for ages. _Predator?_ ” Keith snorted. “Try _Janitor_. Sendak hasn’t done anything but clean up petty messes for a year. That ship is where military careers go to die.”

Somebody snickered into the silence. Everyone else looked distinctly uncomfortable as they made vague noises of agreement. For a common soldier, the only thing worse they could do than insult an absent officer was disagree with the one sitting across the table from them. And judging by Keith’s devious smirk, hidden from the other Galra as he took a drink of whatever foul-smelling beverage the commissary had served tonight, he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Anyway,” Keith continued. “The _Envoy_ just happened to be the first ship to cross my path. Haven’t decided yet if I’m going to stay. What sorts of assignments do you get?”

An awkward silence descended on the table, no one wanting to be the first to speak up. Shiro had to imagine they were all afraid of being the one who convinced the visiting Commander that their ship was a waste of scrap metal.

Of course, they didn’t realize that Keith already had a good idea what the _Envoy_ did. Of all Zarkon’s warships, the _Envoy_ was the fastest. It had the newest wormhole generator, capable of reaching the full length of the Galra Empire. That, along with its smaller size and more powerful engines, meant that it was most often sent to support other warships. Keith and Shiro had spent the morning looking through the available data on its recent assignments and found nothing at all interesting. Certainly nothing that would impress a commander looking to advance his career.

But then, the question wasn't really what the _Envoy_ did. It was what the soldiers here would volunteer in the name of pleasing a disgruntled prince. Keith hoped it would at least point them in the right direction.

“Well, right now we’re just patrolling the region,” the hulking figure at the end of the table said. “It’s boring, but that’s just because we're between jobs.”

“Mostly we go where the fighting is,” the woman next to him added. “Only the major conflicts; the little battles aren’t worth our time.”

The Galra on Shiro’s right side, an older man with gray in his hair, knocked back the rest of his drink and slammed his glass on the table with a _thunk_ that made Keith flinch. Shiro shot him a concerned look.

“It’s the luck of the draw here,” the middle-aged Galra said. “No telling what we’ll be up to tomorrow. Could be saving Sendak’s ass, could be scrubbing the walls to keep from going mad.”

Keith grimaced—probably because the soldier on his other side seemed to have spiked his drink with some kind of Galran liquor and was dangerously close to passing out on Keith’s shoulder. But the other soldiers seemed to take it as displeasure with the _Envoy’_ s routine, and they all exchanged nervous looks until their captain sighed and pushed her plate away.

“The _Envoy_ is what you make of it, Commander. She’s a good ship, if not the flashiest.”

The young man across from Keith nodded vigorously. “Though if you want glory, you really want to get yourself a spot on the _Herald_.”

The look the captain shot his way could have pierced the warship’s hull. Everyone went deathly quiet, except the young man, who tried to cover for what was evidently a slip. It could have been a simple rivalry between commanders, but Shiro doubted it. It looked like Keith had been right: even the foot soldiers knew when something big was happening. Shiro only hoped they'd hit on the _right_ something.

* * *

Pidge tried very hard not to think about Matt’s face when he’d said that he’d been held prisoner in these cells. It was hard enough knowing _anyone_ was being held here in these cramped, cold, dirty spaces that smelled like excrement and rot. Harder knowing, factually, Matt had been here for a short time.

But that million-mile-away look in his eye, the way his lips parted and his breath tripped. Pidge had followed him back to where his memories held him captive, but they were no closer to knocking down the invisible wall around him.

“Hey, Allura?” Pidge asked.

The princess slowed, looking at Pidge almost like she’d forgotten they were there: blinking, glassy-eyed, and almost as absent as Matt. “Yes, Pidge? What is it?”

“I wanted to thank you.”

That one got a reaction out of her. Blue eyes sharpened, sculpted eyebrows drew down in confusion. “What for?”

Pidge paused long enough to glance around the next corner and check for guards. The whole level had been abandoned so far—including the cells, which was either a relief or cause for alarm, and Pidge hadn’t quite figured out which. “For making sure my brother didn’t come down here.”

Allura’s longer legs let her pull ahead as they hurried down the corridor, glancing in empty cells as they passed. Most had windows in the front, though they occasionally had to stop and slice open a door to confirm that the cell was empty.

“I’m not sure I follow,” Allura said after a prolonged silence. “I’m certainly glad Matt agreed to go after the Red Lion, but...why do you not want him here?”

Pidge looked down, wondering how to put it into words. “Whatever the Galra did to him, he--” They scowled. “They hurt him, and I think what happened is still hurting him. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for him to relive all that. He only just got away from the Galra.”

An odd silence followed this statement. Pidge jogged forward a few steps for a better look at Allura’s face. She looked down at them, grimaced, and sped up.

“You’re right, Pidge,” she said softly. “You’re absolutely right.”

There was a note in her voice that made Pidge uneasy, and she didn’t seem to want to look at them which, normally, wouldn’t have bothered Pidge. Right now, though, it made them wonder what Allura had to feel guilty about.

“Princess Allura--”

Pidge didn’t get a chance to say more. Ahead of them, a security drone rounded the corner. It was a gray pyramidal thing about the size of a head hovering four feet off the ground. It stopped, the aperture in the lens at the front constricting as it processed the figures before it.

Pidge darted forward before it could figure out they weren’t supposed to be there. The drone started to retreat, but Pidge nicked it with their bayard. Electricity crackled along the surface of the drone for a moment before its lights flickered out and it dropped to the ground with a thunk.

“Quiznak,” Allura muttered. “That will have alerted the ship’s security. We don’t have much time.”

“Right,” Pidge said. “Just one second.”

They knelt beside the drone as Allura started to protest—but Pidge didn’t need long. They knew electronics, and they’d had enough time with the Green Lion to know that alien tech, while much more advanced than what Earth had developed, shared much of the same foundations. Snip a few wires, disconnect the transmitter that synced the drone up to the Galra system, reboot the power and--

Pidge grinned as the drone came back online. The indicator lights flashed green a few times and then glowed a steady blue. “You work for me now,” Pidge said smugly. They caught sight of Allura’s impatient look and stood, waving for the drone to follow. “I’m gonna call you Rover.”

“You’re _naming_ the security system?” Allura sprinted around the corner into a straightaway with no doors on either side—but there was one, heavily reinforced with a hand scanner beside it, at the far end.

Pidge wrinkled their nose. “No, that would be dumb. I’m naming _my_ _robot_. How else am I supposed to talk to him? Rover, open that door for me.”

Allura looked incredulous as Rover obeyed, zipping ahead and hovering near the hand scanner. A second later the light turned green and the door slid soundlessly open.

“See?” Pidge said, ducking into the cell beyond. A half dozen aliens huddled against the far wall, staring up at Pidge with wide eyes. “Shiro?” Pidge took another step forward, squinting into the dark corners in search of a human form. “Is there a human here named Shiro?”

“You mean Champion.”

It was one of the larger aliens who had spoken, a gray-skinned being with an antenna and four arms, all of which were wrapped protectively around a cowering yellow alien.

Pidge glanced back at Allura. “Champion?” Allura shrugged.

“The human who was here,” said the gray alien. “The one you call Shiro. We knew him as Champion.”

There was a story there, Pidge knew, but now wasn’t the time for that. They filed it away for later. “Is he here? My brother was on his crew. He said Shiro was here.”

Some of the other prisoners exchanged nervous looks, whispering to each other, only to fall silent when they noticed Pidge looking at them. It seemed the gray alien was the only one who wasn’t too scared to talk, so Pidge looked back at him.

“Please. What happened to Shiro—to the Champion?”

The alien hesitated. “He’s not a prisoner here any more.”

“What does that mean?”

Allura put her hand on Pidge’s shoulder and stepped forward. “I am Princess Allura, of Altea. We’re here to rescue you, but if you have any information about our friend, please tell us.”

The prisoner touched one hand to his antenna and murmured something that the comm system didn’t translated for Pidge. It sounded like... some sort of formal greeting, maybe? “My apologies, Princess Allura of Altea. But you should forget about Champion.”

“We should...what?” Pidge was at a loss for words. Forget about Shiro? Why? What was--

There was a sound in the hall behind them. Pidge started to turn, and ended up shoved aside so they hit the side wall hard enough to knock the breath from their lungs. They sagged against the cold metal for a moment, stunned, as the cell around them broke into chaos. Prisoners scrambled for the shadows, crying and shouting. Pidge didn’t know where Allura had gone. They did pick one word from the chaos, though, one word that was repeated over and over:

“Galra!”

* * *

Matt had severely underestimated his ability to navigate the warship without having a heart attack.

He didn’t know his way around, for starters. It wasn’t like prisoners were allowed to wander, and in the rare event he was taken beyond the cells and Arena, the guards would shove a sack over his head. As it turned out, most of the corridors looked exactly the same, and there were an almost infinite number of them. He lost count of how many dead ends he hit before he finally stumbled upon the hangar.

The sheer size of the place stopped him in the doorway for a second—obviously it would have to be big enough to hold the Red Lion, and Matt had some sense of scale for that after seeing the Green Lion, but this.

This felt like stepping into open air, the ceiling so far above his head it was just a faraway gray blur. A handful of guards stood by the lion itself, outside the spherical energy shell it had up in self-defense. One of them caught sight of Matt and shouted to the others. The distance garbled the words, but the blinding flash of laser fire was clear enough.

Matt threw himself behind a pillar.

Oh, god.

Galra. There were Galra over there. The rational corner of his mind said of _course_ there were Galra there, this was a Galra ship, that was a Voltron Lion, why in any universe would there _not_ be Galra there. The rest of his body wasn’t interested in rationality right now. The old wound on his leg burned with fresh, stabbing pain, his heart leaped into his throat. His hands shook as he summoned his bayard and formed the pistol.

The sight of it grounded him, at least a little. He had a weapon. He wasn’t helpless. Maybe he was out of practice with Earth guns, let alone pseudo-magical space guns, but he wasn’t helpless.

_Don’t let them get the upper hand._

Matt tried to remember the look in Shiro’s eyes as the sentries had hauled him out into the Arena. That resolve, that resignation. The look of someone who wasn’t going to go down without doing some damage.

With a guttural cry, Matt stood up, firing in the general direction of the Galra even before he had time to aim. By pure luck one of his shots caught the first Galra in the chest. The soldier fell and didn’t move again.

Encouraged by the sudden good luck, Matt pressed forward, darting from pillar to stacked crates to computer terminal. He didn’t stop shooting until the other three Galra were down and the hangar was silent.

Everything seemed a little fuzzy, his legs wobbling as he hurried toward the Red Lion. Dread soon replaced his heady relief, though, as he approached the shield. _Allura thinks you can do this_ , he told himself. _She’d know, wouldn’t she? Mystical bond with the lions and everything._

Then again, she was desperate and out of options. Why shouldn’t she go for the long shot?

Matt hesitated a few inches from the shield, then pressed his hand against its surface. The shield rippled, shifting under his touch like sand, or maybe like water. It was cooler than he would have guessed, but no less solid for the way it moved.

“All right, Red,” he whispered, suddenly aware of the silence around him. “Time to prove me wrong.”

The lion stared down at him with dark, empty eyes. He thought it looked sad, wary. It looked like he felt--hurt by its time in captivity. Scared to believe in the possibility of freedom. He felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for Red. If it--If  _she_ was sentient, as Allura had said, then she had to be aware of where she was. Matt spread his fingers on the surface of the shield, straining for some sort of answer from the lion, or even simple acknowledgement.

He got none. Red's eyes remained dark. The shield didn't waver.

Matt leaned his forehead against the shield. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”

Footsteps echoed across the hangar—endless footsteps. The Galra weren’t taking chances with a paladin, even one who wasn’t one after all. Matt glanced over his shoulder to see the ranks of Galra filing in. A dozen, two dozen. Each of them with a gun pointing straight at Matt.

He turned back to the lion, too tired to move. He wasn’t a gladiator, he wasn’t a paladin. Why keep fighting when he was clearly not meant to win?

His earpiece crackled to life in his ear.

“Paladins!” Allura called, breathless and a little pained.

Matt’s head jerked up. “Allura? What happened? Where’s Pidge? Did you find Shiro?”

“Shiro?” Lance demanded. “Wait, _Shiro_ Shiro? The legend? He’s _there_?”

“No.” Allura’s grimace was clear. “I'm sorry, Matt.”

Swallowing the disappointment, Matt glanced over his shoulder. The Galra had begun to close in on him, weapons ready but not firing. Not yet. Maybe they thought a paladin of Voltron would have some trick up their sleeve. Maybe no one wanted to be the first to open fire.

“I’m afraid we have a bigger problem right now,” Allura said.

Matt felt his body tense. “What kind of problem?”

It was Pidge’s voice that came on the comms next. “The Galra found us. We’re holding our ground for now, but there are prisoners down here, and we can’t break through without risking them.”

“We need backup,” Allura said.

Images of Pidge in a Galra prison, in the Arena, in a cold, dark, silent cell, flashed through Matt’s mind. _No._ That wasn’t going to happen. No way in hell. Matt’s bayard had reverted to its inactive state at some point. He raised it and turned toward the approaching Galra.

The bayard changed shape in his hand, but it wasn’t a pistol as it had been before. This time it was a sword—a _Galra_ sword. Long and curved with a hooked end. The sword that had injured his leg. The sword Shiro had carried into the Arena. Only this one was streaked  with red.

It looked like blood.

The Galra paused, then raised their weapons and sighted on Matt. He fell into a crouch and prepared to do the stupidest thing he’d ever done.

Into the comms he said, “Hold on, Pidge. I’m coming.”

Then, he charged.

* * *

Hunk braced himself as he rammed the Yellow Lion into the particle barrier. This must have been the fifth time he’d tried it, and the barrier was weakening, hairline fractures like lightning rippling through the nearly translucent shield with this latest hit.

But it wasn’t down yet, which meant that the massive cannon pointed down at Arus—and at Coran in the Castle of Lions—was still operational. It was honestly a miracle the Galra hadn’t fired it yet.

The Blue Lion tumbled into view, pulling off some sort of tuck-and-roll maneuver while firing its laser at the Galra fighters on its tail. It was an utterly Lance move, but somehow the lion, unlike most ships, made it look intentional. In reality, Lance was probably barely maintaining control.

“Hey, Hunk,” Lance called as the last Galra fighter dissolved into shrapnel and a short-lived fireball. A video feed popped up in the corner of Hunk's screen. “You got things covered up here?”

Hunk sunk claws into the warship’s hull. Did he have things covered? He wanted to laugh. True, there were no more fighters at this exact moment—not that that was likely to last long. Meanwhile he still had to get at that cannon and take it down.

_I’m not you, Lance. I’m not a pilot, I’m not even a proper soldier._

He didn’t say any of that, though, because he knew what Lance was really asking. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll just be up here hitting my head against a wall.”

“Good thing you’ve got a hard head.” Lance flashed him a thumbs-up, then spun his lion around, a little wildly. “I’m going to try to get to Pidge and Allura. You know, daring rescue, knight-in-shining-armor style.”

Hunk rolled his eyes and line up his lion for another run at the shield. “You expecting hot alien babes in those cells?”

“I’m keeping my options open,” Lance said.

He was already out of sight, and Hunk urged his lion into a dash. He counted down the paces, braced himself, and-- This time there was definite splintering in the shield. One more run. One more solid hit and he’d be through.

“Aw, yeah. No lame particle barrier is gonna keep out a lion of Voltron.”

* * *

This had not been Matt’s smartest idea. Charging into a squadron of Galra soldiers? Taking one lousy sword against two dozen guns?

_What are you doing? You’re not Shiro._

He was fairly certain he was going to die. Then again, he’d been dead since he set foot on this ship. He’d just finally found the courage to go down swinging.

 _For Pidge._ He could do an awful lot if it meant keeping Pidge safe. Including, apparently, scare a bunch of Galra. They parted around him like waves around a pier, their ranks dissolving, their shots going wild. The paladin armor and bayard must have had a reputation in Zarkon’s army; it certainly wasn’t _Matt_ that was intimidating them.

And anyway, intimidation could only carry him so far. One or two Galra were down, a few more bloodied, but Matt was by far the worst off. Laser blasts shoved him this way and that. So far his armor had saved him, but it was in bad shape. His swings were getting slower, too, his scarred leg threatening to buckle with each step.

He pushed himself to keep fighting, even as his breath turned painful, even when sweat dripped into his eyes and his shoulder wrenched with another laser blast. Pidge still needed him.

Then one of the Galra got in a lucky hit, square in his chest. He was knocked backward, his injured leg finally giving out. He landed hard, bayard falling from numb fingers. He twisted, grasping, as the Galra closed in. Guns whined as they powered up. Matt’s hand closed around the hilt of his bayard.

A roar rocked the hangar, hitting Matt’s ears with the force of an earthquake, or an explosion. He winced—but the Galra looked downright petrified. They stumbled back, firing their weapons, but not at Matt.

He turned to see what had spooked them—and caught a single glimpse of glowing yellow eyes and bared fangs.

Darkness closed around him. His breath echoed off the walls, hitched in his throat. Memories pressed in around him. Dark memories. Hateful memories. He stumbled to his feet and raised his bayard.

But instead of an enemy, a padded chair swept Matt’s feet out from under him, carrying him forward to a dashboard that flickered alight. This was… “Red?”

A deep rumble answered him, and the screen in front of him resolved into a view of the hangar. Galra soldiers lay crushed beneath the Red Lion’s paws. Those who had been lucky enough to survive ran for the door, turning occasionally to fire over their shoulders at Matt.

A moment later the comms connected, and the voices of the other paladins filled the cockpit.

“All _right_!” Hunk cheered. An image of him appeared in the lower corner of the viewscreen. He threw a fist in the air. “That’s one giant cannon out of commission.”

“Nice one, Hunk!” Lance’s voice sounded far away, and the video feed showed an empty chair. A moment later he appeared from the side of the screen, throwing himself into the pilot’s seat. Three aliens gathered around behind him. “Mission: Knight in Shining Armor was a re _sounding_ success, too.”

“We are _not_ calling it that,” Pidge said. Allura and three other aliens were visible behind them on the Green Lion’s video feed.

Matt closed his eyes as a wave of relief washed over him. _Safe_. Pidge was safe, and Matt was miraculously still alive.

He wasn’t out yet, though. Taking up the controls, Matt turned the lion toward the bay doors. It was time to see what one of these things could do.

The lasers rocked the whole cockpit, though not as much as the resulting explosion. Galra corpses and debris disappeared through the new hole, and Matt followed them out into open space. It was funny; he’d been in space plenty of times before, in training, then on the Kerberos mission, and then today in the other lions and the Altean pod.

This was something else entirely. He may have been inside the Red Lion, but the boundary between him and the lion was impossibly thin. Matt felt exposed—but not vulnerable.

He felt _free_.

Allura’s voice brought him back to reality. “Has anyone heard from Matt?”

“Right here,” Matt said. “And I’ve got a new friend with me.”

Lance and Hunk cheered as he urged Red toward them. Pidge gave Matt a private smile. “As if there was any doubt.”

“Congratulations, Matt,” Allura said. Matt flushed at the pride and genuine joy in her voice. “I knew you could do it.”

* * *

They regrouped at the Castle of Lions. Or maybe it was too hasty to call it a regrouping. Pidge had barely gotten their lion’s feet on the ground when Coran’s voice came over the comms.

“Better make this one quick, guys. Sendak’s already got people working on getting his cannon back up and running.”

“Whaaaat?” Hunk asked. “I crumpled that thing like a piece of paper. He’s not allowed to fix it!”

“There is a bright side!” Coran assured him. “Sendak may get that cannon ready to fire here in the next few minutes, but there’s no way he can do more than a rudimentary alignment on that barrel.”

Lance grinned. “So he can fire it, but he can’t aim!”

“Exactly!”

“Why are you so excited about that?” Hunk demanded. “Did you _see_ the size of that laser? Even if he can’t aim, he can still turn this planet to dust.”

“Not if you five form Voltron first.”

Pidge eased the lion’s head to the ground and opened the mouth. Allura and the prisoners hurried out. The plan, as they’d all sketched it out on the flight back to the castle, was for Allura and Lance to take the prisoners to a rec room near the hangars. Lance would then return to his lion and join the others in the Black Lion’s bay, bringing down the defenses so Allura could claim her lion.

Pidge hadn’t expected the wait to feel so long, or so nerve-wracking. They arrived at the Black Lion with Matt and Hunk and then...sat there. Seconds ticked by. How long did they have? Coran hadn’t been very specific. From his urgency, they probably only had a few minutes—maybe less.

“We’ll be fine, Pidge,” Matt said, and Pidge realized two things simultaneously.

First was that they’d started rocking. Their back hit the seat in a metronomic rhythm, a soft, regular beat that they felt in their whole body. There was just too much nervous energy coursing through their body, making it impossible to sit still.

Secondly, Matt had switched over to a private channel to talk to Pidge. Hunk and Coran’s feeds dimmed, though they still lined the edge of Pidge’s screen. Above them, Lance slid back into his pilot’s chair and took the controls.

Pidge smiled for Matt. “I know,” they said. “I just don’t like waiting.”

Matt laughed a little breathlessly. It might have just been the high of battle that made it sound so strained. “I know. Just hang in there a little longer.”

Seconds later the Blue Lion joined the other three in the massive bay. In the next instant, Pidge’s lion seemed to wake up. It moved without Pidge’s direction, perfectly synced up to the others. Together, they all roared—Pidge hadn’t even known these lions _could_ roar. Who built vocalizations into robotic lions?

(Well, Pidge would, to be honest, but Pidge did a lot of things most people thought were a waste of resources. Like making their robots run silently, or outfitting them with indicator lights that didn’t gouge Pidge's eyes out with a spoon when they came on, or naming every single robot they’d ever made.)

Whatever the rationale behind the roars was, they certainly did the job. The force field surrounding the Black Lion’s hangar wavered and disappeared—just as Allura came sprinting in from the corridor.

“Perfect timing, your Highness,” Matt said. “She’s all ready for you.”

Allura nodded. Then her face soured. “I’ll be _fine_ , Coran,” she snapped, leaping up the flight of stairs to Black’s hangar. “Don’t--”

The entire castle shook hard enough to make Allura stumble. Pidge gripped their lion’s controls tighter as Coran came back on the open channel.

“Looks like Sendak’s got that cannon back online,” he said. “Luckily that shot missed us by at least two marks.”

Allura regained her balance and sprinted to the Black Lion, which lowered its head to let her in. Once she disappeared inside, Lance wheeled the Blue Lion around. “I really hope a mark is, like, ten miles,” he muttered.

Pidge followed Lance out into the open plains around the castle. Hunk, Matt, and Allura were close behind.

“I don’t really care how close it is,” Pidge said. “Let’s just take down that ship.”

“Agreed,” said Hunk.

“Coran.” Allura looked a little uneasy at the controls of the Black Lion, but she quickly found her rhythm. “How are the shields looking?”

Coran hesitated. “Not at full power, Princess, but up and running. They should take at least one direct hit before buckling.”

 _Should_ and _at least one_ and _not at full power_ all sounded considerably less than reassuring to Pidge, but Allura didn’t comment. She hunched over the controls, lips pressed together. “There’s no time to waste, Paladins. We must form Voltron.”

“Yeah!” Hunk looked pumped for all of half a second before his face fell. “How do we do that?”

Allura bit her lip. "I'm...not entirely sure."

“ _What?_ ” Pidge yelped.

Lance was right on their tail. “Hold the phone. You don’t _know_?!”

“Oh, man,” said Hunk. “We’re all gonna die.”

“Hey!” Matt’s voice silenced them all. “Everyone shut up and calm down.”

Lance barked out a laugh. “Did you miss the part where none of us knows what we’re doing?”

“That’s life,” Matt said, and now Pidge was certain he was thinking about his time as a Galra prisoner. “It sucks, and it’s not fair, and you never know what you’re doing. Sometimes, you’ve just got to make it work.”

“Thanks, Tim Gunn,” Lance muttered, but he sounded calmer. “So what’s the plan? We just, like, fly around in formation until we magically combine into a superweapon?”

Light flashed as though in answer. Sendak’s warship appeared in the clouds overhead, the cannon on its back glowing with an eerie violet light. As Pidge looked on in horror, the cannon fired, unleashing a laser the size of a school on the ground below.

This one didn’t miss.

“Coran!” Allura cried as the particle barrier shuddered, a wave of tiles turning opaque red as they strained to withstand the blast.

“I’m fine, Princess. Shields holding at thirty-eight percent.”

Allura grit her teeth. “All right, Paladins, here’s the plan. We fly up there and stop Sendak, with or without Voltron. One team, one purpose: destroy that ship.”

“Now _that’s_ a plan I can get behind.” Lance whooped, and they all urged their lions skyward.

It was certainly a simple plan. The lions were fast, and they were strong. Sendak sent out a cloud of fighters to intercept them, but the lions cut through them like gnats. But they were nothing compared to the warship itself. Their weapons could only breach the hull where it was thinnest—in the nonessential areas. Over the engine, the bridge, the hangars that leaked more fighters with each passing second, was thick armored plating that seemed impervious to everything the lions could throw at it.

They’d hardly done anything but scorch the surface when the cannon fired again, again hitting the Castle of Lions. Sendak must have figured out how to correct for the warped barrel.

 _Well, quiznak_ , Pidge thought.

“Shields down,” Coran warned. “Redirecting residual power to lasers.”

Thin spears of blue-white light shot up from the ground. Several caught fighters, disintegrating them on contact. Others found the hull of the warship—but they did no more than the lions’ lasers.

“I don’t mean to nag, but now would be a good time to form Voltron, Princess.”

Wide-eyed, Allura nodded. “You heard Coran. Paladins, together now! Form Voltron!”

Pidge urged their lion into a tight V formation with the others, straining at the bond they had with Green. There had to be something, some switch, some command that would trigger the fusion. The lions were basically machines, after all. They just had to run the right program.

A smaller cannon fired a laser the size of a bus at them. Lance and Hunk, flying at the rear of the formation, were forced to break away if they didn’t want to get fried.

Ahead, the main cannon began to glow.

“Oh no,” Pidge whispered. “Guys! The cannon!”

Pidge flew in a sharp arc, a single thought forefront in their mind. Hunk had crushed the barrel of the cannon with his lion before. It was, so far, the only thing any of them had done that had had any effect.

Evidently, the other four paladins had a similar thought at the exact same time. Matt and Allura flew neck-and-neck with Pidge; Lance and Hunk approached from the opposite side of the canon. The glow reached a blinding intensity.

Five lions hit metal at the same time, crimping the two guiding panels. The cannon looked less like a gun now, more like a hose with a kink in it.

Only this hose wasn’t filling up with water. It was filling up with plasma as the cannon prepared to fire.

“Everyone clear the area!” Allura shouted—unnecessarily, as it happened. Everyone had already scattered. An instant later the cannon fired. The laser rebounded off the mangled barrel and burned clean through the warship. The explosion was enough to flip the Green Lion end over end.

Pidge whooped as they stabilized themself. “That’s one way to take down a warship!”

The Blue Lion spun, and Lance’s face on his feed broke into a wide grin. “Holy quiznak, you guys. We _wrecked_ that thing!”

Pidge angled Green’s head enough to see the flaming wreckage of Sendak’s ship falling from the sky. “Looks like fireworks,” they said.

Lance nodded. “Best damn fireworks I’ve ever seen.”

* * *

“So tell me.” Shiro sat down on the table beside Keith’s computer. “Is the whole ‘socially inept loose cannon’ thing your _plan_ , or is that just the way this happened to play out?”

Keith didn’t look up from the display screen. “First of all, I promise you the socially inept part is one hundred percent natural. As for the rest...well, it’s less that I’m trying to make them think I’m a ‘loose cannon.’ More that I’ve stopped trying to make them think I’m _not_.”

Shiro nodded thoughtfully. Keith did his best to ignore him. “Interesting strategy,” Shiro said.

“It means they underestimate me,” Keith said shortly. “Aren’t you supposed to be watching the door?”

“I can see it from here.” At Keith’s glare, Shiro sighed. “Look, I know how you feel. I don’t like knowing someone could walk in on us, but do you really think posting _me_ outside as a guard is going to draw less attention?”

Keith rubbed his hand across his face. “No.”

Shiro spread his arms, then fell silent as Keith skimmed through the _Herald_ ’s recent reports. To be honest, he’d hoped the ship had been deployed to Earth, but of course it wasn’t that simple. Instead, it seemed to be stationed on the edge of Zarkon’s empire as one of several warships charged with conquering new planets. The _Herald_ alone had claimed three planets in the last year, and assisted in subduing two more. Now it was on its way to a new one. Keith didn’t recognize the coordinates, but--

“Wait.”

Shiro sat up. “Find something?”

 _Maybe_. Keith kept his mouth shut as he went back to the previous half dozen reports and noted the coordinates on his wrist-mounted unit. He called up a stellar map of the region and plotted the _Herald’s_ course. Keith was uncomfortably aware of Shiro’s proximity, his hand on Keith’s shoulder, his face hovering near Keith’s ear. It felt like needles prickling his skin. His hair stood on end. As subtly as he could, he leaned away.

“That’s...”

Keith nodded. When he removed the detours the _Herald_ had taken to assist other conquests, it followed a pretty straight line. Keith raised a finger to follow the trail.

“The first wave,” Keith said. “And usually the last. It’s bringing more planets under Zarkon’s control. And it’s headed straight for Earth.”

Shiro stood, radiating fury. Keith looked up at him.

“We need to get on that ship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's read and left comments or kudos. It makes my day to hear that other people are enjoying this fic! With this update, I'm officially on a regular schedule. New chapter every Monday with occasional bonus updates on Thursdays or Fridays if I get a lot of writing done.
> 
> As always, you can find me at squirenonny.tumblr.com


	4. A Test of Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Pidge and Allura freed some prisoners from Sendak's ship, Matt earned the Red Lion's trust, and Team Voltron brought down Sendak's ship...but they didn't manage to form Voltron. Meanwhile Shiro and Keith discovered that Zarkon's commanders are expanding the borders of the Galra empire--and they're headed straight for Earth.

“I want a spot on the _Herald_.”

Keith’s voice sounded foreign to his ears—much too calm and confident for the nervous buzz inside him. He sounded like a Galra prince _should_ sound. He sounded like his father.

That wasn’t terribly surprising. What little skill he had in dealing with the other commanders had come from watching his father work. Keith had several years’ worth of facial expressions, vocal tones, and stock phrases stored away, ready to be produced as part of his act.

It was an exhausting game, a constant dance of content and context—responding to what was said and guessing at what was left unsaid. Keith often wondered how he’d lasted even a single year in command. Everyone around him had to see he wasn’t made for this. Command in Zarkon’s army was as much politics as combat, and Keith was no politician. But he’d somehow managed to bluff his way this far. There was nothing to do but press his luck.

The only problem was the audience. Mostly Keith had only had to keep up his commander act in front of Sendak, since no one else cared what he did—except once, three months ago, when he’d convinced Zarkon to hand Shiro over to Keith for...supervision.

He’d hoped never to see Zarkon again—yet here he was. Keith and Tarrok stood alone on the _Envoy_ ’s communication deck. Zarkon, Haggar, and Orgul—the _Herald_ ’s commander—were present as life-size holograms on either side of Keith.

Only Tarrok looked happy at Keith’s request. He’d probably be glad to get rid of Keith and Shiro.

“Lord Zarkon,” Orgul said, her voice a low rasp. “I’m sure you’ll agree my mission is too important to risk in the hands of untrained children and their pets.”

Keith bristled at the sugared tone of her voice. He wondered if she was trying to provoke him. “Stop pretending you outrank me, Commander Orgul,” he hissed. “As for my ‘pet’… Perhaps you’ve forgotten the work Haggar put into preparing him.”

Keith’s stomach twisted at the thought of what Haggar had done to Shiro, but his words did their job. Haggar smiled from beneath her hood, making both Tarrok and Orgul cringe. They, like the other princes, didn’t understand why Haggar had allowed Keith such control over the subject of her experiments. It seemed to place Keith above the rest, whether or not he had his own warship.

They didn’t know the half of it. Keith hadn’t won Haggar’s approval, only her hatred. If anyone blocked Keith’s request, it would be her, if only out of spite. Keith had to hope her itch to see Shiro in action as the weapon she’d tried to make him would outweigh her grudge against Keith.

“The human is _wasted_ in deep space,” Keith said, staring Haggar down—easier with her than the others, as the shadow of her hood obscured her eyes. “He was intended to be a weapon, wasn’t he? He belongs on the front lines, where he can make the enemies of Lord Zarkon kneel.”

“He cannot be trusted,” Orgul hissed. She bared her teeth at Keith, and he was struck suddenly by how much she looked like an Earth bat—large, forward-facing ears, upturned nose, small eyes. She looked like she’d sooner crush you than suck your blood, but Keith thought Shiro might find the comparison amusing.

Tarrok waved his hand. “That human is thoroughly tamed, Orgul. He might get himself killed on the ground, but he won’t start a rebellion. He doesn’t have the capacity for something like that.”

Keith snorted. _If only you knew._

Orgul turned her glare to Tarrok. “Easy for you to say. _You_ wouldn’t have to clean up its mess.”

“Neither would you.” Keith smirked as Orgul’s eyes returned to him. “The human is under _my_ command. _I_ will handle his discipline.”

“And claim the glory if he manages to do anything useful,” Orgul said sourly.

“Naturally.”

Orgul stared him down a moment longer, then turned to Zarkon and Haggar. “The _Herald_ is my ship, Lord Zarkon. This is my mission. I will not have it compromised by an untested element.”

“Lord Zarkon--” Keith began, but Haggar held up a hand to silence all three commanders.

She waited, reveling in her power, and then spoke. “I propose a test.”

Keith’s stomach bottomed out. This was Haggar—the creator of Shiro’s arm, the mastermind behind the “experiments" he'd suffered, both in the Arena and outside it. Keith didn’t want to know what she meant when she said _test._ “What do you mean?”

“A test of loyalty. To see if our weapon will do as it's told. If he passes, you will take him to the _Herald_. If not...”

She let the sentence hang. To the side, Keith saw Orgul smile savagely.

Keith lifted his chin in that arrogant, fearless posturing he’d seen so often in other Galra. “He will not fail.”

Haggar’s smile could have frozen marrow.

“Then it is decided,” Zarkon said. “We will inform you when the test is ready.”

Keith clapped a fist to his chest and bowed over it. “Vrepit sa.” Orgul and Tarrok echoed him, the sound resounding in Keith’s ears. The holograms faded, and Tarrok strode from the room. Keith followed more slowly, his mouth suddenly dry as he replayed the conversation in his head.

What had he gotten them into?

* * *

Lance already missed the action of the previous day.

No, scratch that. The Galra and all their death-tech could go screw themselves. (Not that Lance was afraid of risk. He had joined the Garrison as a fighter pilot, after all. But three brushes with death-by-purple-alien in the span of six hours? That was a little much.) Lance wasn’t sad that he wasn’t currently fighting for his life. He just wished things hadn’t swung quite so far the other way.

Allura had wanted them all to spend the day training so they could figure out how to form Voltron before they landed in the middle of another battle. But in the wake of the battle with Sendak, it became overwhelmingly clear that Matt Holt wasn’t up to that. He’d already been in rough shape after his crash landing on Earth—banged up, half-starved, and bone tired. Then he’d gone and collected a few more bumps getting the Red Lion.

Coran had insisted he spend the day in the cryo-replenishers, where they’d stuck the rescued prisoners. Matt had protested almost as much as Allura, but Coran turned out to be surprisingly difficult to say no to.

So now Lance had the day free, and the entire castle to explore. It was fun, at first. Lance had found the training deck (now peppered with scorch marks where he’d missed his targets). He’d made lunch (and a mess) from food goo in the third kitchen he’d found. After that, he’d somehow ended up in a heated debate with the AI over the definition of “alien.” The AI must have been incredibly simplistic if it couldn’t grasp the fact that humans were not _aliens_.

Now he was lost. And bored.

Part of the whole “lost” thing was that he didn’t know where he was going. Oh, _sure_ , he could go back to the training deck, see if he could hit more than one target out of three. Or he could clean up the mess in the kitchen, or take a nap, or one of a million other things.

It was so much _easier_ when he didn’t have so many choices. _That_ was what he missed about the battles. When a Galra ship wanted you dead, it was like nothing else existed.

Eventually, Lance decided to find one of the others, see if a conversation would keep him entertained. He went to find Hunk—partially because Hunk had been his best friend since they both started at the Garrison, and partially because no one else was available. Matt was still in the healing pod. Pidge had camped out there last night and more than likely crashed sometime around dawn. And Allura and Coran were “running diagnostics” on the castle, which sounded like the most god-awful snooze in the universe.

But Lance knew Hunk, and Hunk would keep him entertained.

...If only Lance could find him.

“Hunk!” Lance called, wandering down a corridor on the...ninth floor? Maybe. It was above the bedrooms but below the bridge. _God_ this place was big. “You here, buddy?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer—he’d already wandered through three levels looking for Hunk, and there was no _particular_ reason to think he’d be here—but then he heard movement up ahead.

“Hunk?”

There was a _bang_ , and Hunk poked his head into the corridor. “Lance? What are you….Are those _pajamas_?”

Lance looked down at himself. He hadn’t bothered to put his jeans and tee shirt back on yet; he was still looking for a laundromat or something. So instead he was wearing blue silk PJs that looked pretty fine, if he said so himself. “You like? Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Before I forget, I need your measurements.”

Hunk raised his eyebrows. “Why...?”

“So I can make you pajamas! You don’t want to sleep in those clothes forever, do you?”

While Hunk was still staring at him in stupefaction, Lance sauntered into the room and collapsed on the first horizontal surface he found—a work table covered with funky-looking mechanical parts. He had to push some of them aside so he didn’t get a screw in his kidney, but all in all the table wasn’t too horribly uncomfortable. “You know, I’ve been looking for you for _ever_. Whatcha working on?”

Hunk sat on the edge of the bench he’d pulled up beside the table. (Right. Bench. That was a place to sit.) “Wait, rewind for a second. You made those pajamas?”

“Uh, _yah._ You think this castle has magic self-sizing PJs lying around?” Lance scratched his head. “Okay, so our armor is magic and self-sizing. _Fine_. But PJs?”

Hunk leaned an elbow on the table. “So you decided to make some clothes. Makes sense. When, exactly, did you find the time for this?”

“Last night.”

“And how late were you up?”

Lance gave him a deadpan look. “Have you seen the clocks here, Hunk? They don’t run on Earth time.”

Rolling his eyes, Hunk picked up the thing he’d been working on—some big metal oblong lump thing. Lance had less than no clue what it was. “Let me phrase it this way,” Hunk said. “Were you asleep before or after Pidge?”

“Before. Probably.”

Hunk sighed.

Lance glanced to the side and picked up a doodad by his face that looked like a glass U stuck on a top hat. “Anyway. Measurements. Gimme. There’s like a million extra sets of silk sheets in this place...and some of them are _yellow_.”

Hunk glanced at him, unimpressed. “You might want to be careful with that thing you’re holding. It might explode. Also, are you sure Princess Allura’s okay with you cutting up her sheets?”

Lance was too busy staring in horror as the U/top hat to answer. Slowly, he slid his eyes toward Hunk. “Hunk, be straight with me for a second.”

“If this is leading up to a pun, Lance, I swear to god--”

“Are you making a bomb.”

Hunk choked on his words. His elbow bumped a metal plate and sent it crashing to the ground. “ _What?_ No! _Why_ would I be making a bomb?”

Lance shrugged, dropping the doodad back onto the tabletop. “I dunno. _I’m_ not making a bomb.”

"Neither am I!”

With a long, hard look at Hunk, Lance slid off the table and sat on the bench next to Hunk. He was definitely taking apart the big thing in the middle of the table, setting pieces aside one by one. Lance had seen him do this before with jet engines and guidance systems and whatever other junk he could get his hands on. It was Hunk’s way of figuring out how things worked.

Presumably this time he was figuring out alien tech.

Lance drummed his fingers on his knees, then bounced his legs in place for a few seconds. He was too restless to sit still, though, and was soon back on his feet, pacing the room. It was definitely a work room of some sort. Which...made sense, now that Lance thought about it. Why take apart random space junk in a random space room when you could go where the tools were? Tools and tables and bendy lights and...what were those things in the baskets on the wall? Alien spark plugs or something?

Lance was _not_ an engineer.

“Anyway,” he said. “Getting back to the topic at hand.”

“Which one?”

“The pajamas, Hunk, get with the program.”

“Right.”

Lance spun on his toes and walked heel-to-fuzzy-lion-slippered-toe back toward the work table. (The lion slippers were _not_ Lance’s creation; those had been in one of the storage rooms he’d stumbled into by accident this morning.)

“The way I figure, Allura doesn’t even have to _know_ I used sheets for the PJs. There are so many bedrooms in this place she’ll never notice that a few have been ransacked.”

Hunk held up a metal ring the size of a quarter and eyed Lance through it. “And she won’t recognize the Voltron-colored silk?”

“I think she’ll appreciate that I’m sticking with the theme.”

Hunk laughed softly and shook his head, then bent back over his space junk. Lance circled the room a few more times, then stood to one side, practicing his quick-draw bayard summoning technique. (The name was less than quick, admittedly. It needed work.)

The third time Hunk reached down to pat his pocket, Lance knew something was up.

“You okay, buddy?”

Hunk stiffened, studiously avoiding Lance’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”

Lance was silent for a moment, scratching his chin as he stared at Hunk. He looked tired, but that might have been the beds here. (Oh, god, the beds. They were harder than the Garrison bunks, which was saying something. And all the noise in the castle? More than half the reason Lance had made pajamas last night was that he couldn’t fall asleep—not that he’d ever tell Hunk that. No reason to make the big guy worry.)

The screwdriver Hunk was using kept slipping off the screw. Hunk swore under his breath and wiped his palm on his pants.

Lance was just starting to run down a list of all the things that could get Hunk worked up like this, when it hit him.

“Oh,” he breathed.

Hunk’s hands stopped moving.

Lance dropped down onto the bench beside him. “How much did you have on you?”

Hunk’s hand dipped into his pocket again. The pocket, Lance now realized, where he kept a little plastic pill bottle. “Two doses.”

“Shit.”

Hunk tensed all over, conspicuously not looking at Lance. “I’ll be fine.”

“Hunk...”

“Lance, don’t.” Hunk’s voice was tight, like he was inches away from yelling. Or crying. His eyes, when he looked over at Lance, were bloodshot. Lance had to wonder how much sleep he’d gotten last night. How much sleep had _any_ of them gotten? With a long breath, Hunk went back to working on his engine, or whatever it was. His hands were shaking. “I’m trying really hard not to think about it yet, because if I think about it right now, I’m going to have a panic attack, and I _really_ need my Ativan to last me until—until--”

Lance dug his elbow into Hunk’s side. “Okay, okay, jeez. Lighten up. As a matter of fact, stand up.”

Hunk frowned at him. “What?”

Lance just stood, tugging on Hunk’s arm. He abandoned his project readily enough—no surprise there. It obviously wasn’t distracting him enough, not anymore. “Spoilers, Hunk. Just be quiet and follow me.”

* * *

“I may have done something bad.”

Keith apparently didn’t put enough doom and gloom into his statement, because Shiro only laughed in response. “Who’d you punch this time?”

Scowling, Keith stretched out on his bunk, hands folded under his head. There was silence for a moment, and then Shiro turned away from the data pad he’d been looking at.

“What’s wrong?”

Keith turned his face to the wall. “I requested the transfer, just like we planned.”

“Yeah?”

“And Orgul was pissy about it, like I said she would be.”

“Okay...”

Keith glanced quickly toward Shiro, gauged his expression—more confused than worried—then glared again at the wall. “And then Haggar got involved and proposed a test. For you.”

“Oh.”

Keith tugged on his ear. “I agreed.”

Shiro blew out a long breath and rested his elbows on his knees. Keith watched him as discreetly as he could. “You did the right thing, Keith. We _need_ to get on that ship.”

Keith opened his mouth, only to find himself at a loss for words. Shiro seemed sincere. Grim, but not angry. Not scared. But...this was Haggar. Even among the princes, she had a reputation for cruelty. Keith was worried about the test, and he wasn’t even the one who had to pass it.

“When is it?” Shiro asked, as calm as if he was asking about dinner.

“I don’t know. A day or two?”

Shiro nodded. “Then there’s not much point in dwelling on it now.” He stood. “I’m heading down to the training deck. You want to come?”

 _Not really_ , Keith thought, but he stood anyway and followed Shiro out of the room. A good spar would help clear out this nervous energy.

* * *

The orders came two days later: bring Shiro to the Arena early the following morning, before the rest of the ship was up and moving. Shiro’s face drained of all color when he heard, but he kept his face carefully blank and reminded Keith that it was too late to back out now.

Keith never should have agreed to Haggar’s test.

Keith and Shiro rose early for the test, and Keith didn’t have much time to reassure Shiro before they had to part ways. Maybe that was for the best, though. Keith wasn’t one for sentimentality, and without any way of knowing what Haggar’s test would be, he couldn’t offer any practical advice.

According to Haggar’s message, Keith would be permitted to observe the test from a specially prepared room. Presumably this was to keep him from influencing the test—which was a reasonable precaution, especially considering the fact that Shiro was not, in fact, loyal to Zarkon. With luck, Keith wouldn’t _need_ to interfere.

He was still deep in thought when he reached the observation room, but he froze in the doorway, heart pounding in his chest.

Haggar was there. In person.

Tarrok stood behind her, watching Keith’s reaction with a smirk he didn’t bother to conceal. At the back of the room, Lieutenant Karna stood beside one of Haggar’s druids, whose face was concealed beneath a hood much like Haggar’s own.

A few ticks passed, and Keith forced himself to breathe normally. He entered the room, trying not to flinch at the sound of the door sealing behind him, and joined Tarrok and Haggar at the bank of monitors filling one wall of the room. He told himself he had no reason to fear being alone with Haggar—or at least, no more reason than anyone else. As far as anyone knew, he was a loyal soldier, if inexperienced and unsuited for his rank.

_Lucky you’re good at faking it._

He bowed his head to Haggar, who only smiled in return. The monitors before them showed the Arena from several angles.

Tarrok’s Arena was similar in design to the one on Sendak’s ship, where Shiro had fought for nine months, where Keith and Shiro had first met. A stadium in the heart of the ship, directly above the prisoners’ cells, with seating for hundreds around the dusty Arena floor. Pillars and arches stood around the central space to provide cover and keep the battles interesting.

A single glance was enough to tell that this Arena had been used rarely, if at all. The stone structures, which on the _Predator_ were little more than scattered rubble, remained untouched, the floor smooth and clean.

Keith was vaguely aware that Sendak was the one who had proposed the concept of the Arena, and that it had been a long while before the other commanders copied him. Maybe Tarrok had only recently built this Arena. Maybe Haggar’s test was going to be its first. Or maybe Tarrok simply didn’t transport many prisoners. The _Predator_ , which chased down rebels and deserters, and the _Herald_ , stationed on the front lines, would have more victims to sacrifice in the name of entertainment.

The Arena was empty—floor and seats both. It seemed Haggar didn’t want her test to have an audience.

Tarrok held out an earpiece to Keith.

“What’s this?” Keith asked, even as he reached out to accept it.

“This test is designed to show us just how well your weapon follows orders,” Haggar said smoothly. “You will, of course, issue those orders.”

Ah. Keith said nothing as he settled the earpiece into place, but his mind was already working through the knot. _So Haggar does suspect._ This test was for Keith as much as for Shiro. He would have to guide Shiro through the test, yes, but he would have to do so as a proper Galra officer—not a friend, not an ally, but a commander. With Haggar, Tarrok, and their lieutenants so close at hand, Keith didn’t have room to slip up. Fortunately, he and Shiro had worked out a few code words for a situation like this—assuming Shiro remembered them. Assuming Haggar’s test was one where their encoded orders would work.

Keith was still running potential orders through his head, trying to work out how to sound detached without making Shiro distrust him, when a voice came through the transmitter.

“This is Unit 1, awaiting orders.” It was Shiro’s voice, clipped and cold, and Keith felt himself relax. _Unit 1_ was Haggar’s official designator for Shiro, and not something Shiro or Keith ever used—except when they were putting on an act for other Galra.

Shiro must have realized when they gave him the comm that their conversation was going to be monitored as closely as Shiro’s actions.

Keith smiled tightly as he watched one set of Arena doors open on the monitor. Shiro stepped out, dressed in his armor but without any sort of weapon. _I suppose Haggar really does want to see her weapon in action._ Shiro wouldn’t like that—he avoided using his prosthetic arm in that way when he could—but he might not have a choice.

“Standby, Unit 1.”

It was remarkable, really, how relaxed Shiro looked. Ready for a fight, sure, but loose. Unworried. One of the monitors showed a close-up of his face: eyes alert, jaw set. The overall impression he gave off was one of boredom.

He was doing a much better job at bluffing than Keith.

The other set of doors opened. Shiro raised his hand and dropped into a crouch.

“The test,” Haggar said in Keith’s ear, “is simple. Kill your opponent.”

Keith’s gaze darted toward her, but he knew before he looked that her face wouldn’t tell him anything. He focused instead on the screen, watching as Shiro’s opponent came out—a willowy alien with blue-gray skin. Keith recognized the species—Anuvin. Anuvins were a genderless arboreal species, quick and agile, but poorly suited to close combat. The hooked claws on their hands and feet were too short to do much damage, their slender tail well adapted to gripping branches, but useless as a weapon. They had keen eyesight and hearing, but unarmed as this one was?

If Shiro really wanted to kill the Anuvin, the fight would be over in seconds.

It was hard to make out many details at this distance, but the Anuvin in the Arena appeared to be an adolescent, their snout still short and round compared to their head.

The two opponents faced off across the open floor, Shiro tense and waiting for orders, the Anuvin cowering by the door, which had closed behind them. Keith swallowed, momentarily paralyzed. _This_ was the test?

It was simple, and yet frighteningly effective. Keith didn’t have to say a word to know that Shiro would never kill an unarmed, frightened, unwilling opponent—especially if that opponent was a child. The instant Keith gave Shiro the order to kill, they were all as good as dead.

His hesitation seemed to amuse Tarrok. “What’s the matter, commander? It’s just a little Anuvin. Can’t your weapon even handle that?”

Keith eyed him. There was something about the glint in his eyes, the way he held himself, like he was laughing at Keith. Like he was in on some grand joke at Keith’s expense. Was he this eager to see Keith fail? Or was it something else? Haggar’s face betrayed nothing, as usual, but behind them Karna watched the screens with a grin that bared his teeth.

Watching the _screens_ , not Keith. There _was_ more to this test.

Keith focused on the monitors, scanning the Arena for signs of a trap. “Unit One, Mirek’s feint.”

The words came out confident and calm as Keith shut off the part of his brain that wanted to panic. There were a lot of ways he could screw this up, but not doing anything would get him killed quicker than the rest. He was still aware of the eyes watching him, judging him, but he couldn’t let that matter now.

Thankfully, Shiro responded without so much as pausing to breathe. Mirek’s feint was one of the commands they’d worked out to use as code. It was common enough among Zarkon’s forces—a charge designed to provoke an attack, in which the attacker pulled back at the last second to avoid falling into a trap.

It was also, as far as Shiro was concerned, the perfect stall tactic. _Act like a loyal Galra soldier, buy time, we’ll find a way around this._

Shiro closed in with the ferocity of the Champion, the violet glow of Quintessence enveloping his mechanical arm. The Anuvin whistled in terror and dove out of the way. Shiro had already pivoted as part of Mirek’s feint, dodging a surprise attack that never came. He tried again, and again his opponent ran instead of springing a trap.

Keith would have cursed if he could have. _Something_ was going on in this test, but he didn’t have much time to figure out what. One feint, or two, were reasonable precaution. But if Shiro didn’t attack in earnest soon, it was going to look suspicious.

Every option Keith saw meant failure.

“There’s no trick, commander.” Haggar’s voice was silk in his ear, a wet, cloying sound that turned Keith’s stomach. He would have leaned away from her if he could. “I am not interested in wasting time unnecessarily. Order him to kill his opponent. If he follows through, you have your transfer.”

 _Shit._ Keith frantically studied the screens one last time. There had to be some way out of this. Tarrok and Karna—they knew something. They were in on the secret of the test. There was another layer to this, somehow.

The thought had occurred to him that the secret may simply be that Haggar was toying with him. Zarkon may have already discovered Keith’s betrayal, may have already ordered his execution.

 _Don’t think like that,_ he told himself. There _was_ a way out of this. If only he had time to think!

But he didn’t. Haggar was watching him. Karna didn’t move from his position on the back wall, but his sword rasped as he began to ease it from its sheath.

“Unit One,” Keith said, the words like tar in his mouth. He wondered if Haggar would only kill Shiro, if the order was given but then ignored.

He wondered if he could live with himself if he let that happen.

Even as flimsy plans for an escape spun through his mind, Keith noticed something. The Anuvin passed between Shiro and one of the cameras as it fled, and in that instant Keith had his first good look at the prisoner. Anuvin ears were shaped similarly to Galra ears, with fleshy, conical outer structures that made it difficult to see into the ear canal from most angles.

Which meant Shiro probably hadn’t noticed the earpiece nestled inside his opponent’s ear.

_I see._

New determination rose up inside Keith. There _was_ more to this than it first seemed, and Keith thought he may have just realized Haggar’s trick—or at least part of it.

Now he just had to figure out how to tell Shiro the answer without tipping off the executioners.

* * *

“Unit One, hold.”

Shiro stopped, panting, grateful beyond words for the respite. Keith’s voice sounded considerably more confident than the last time he’d spoken, several painfully long seconds ago. Shiro could only hope that meant Keith had a plan, because he sure as hell didn’t.

The other prisoner cowered behind a pillar ten feet away, whimpering softly. That and Shiro’s ragged breathing were the only sounds in the Arena. That didn’t matter, though. Shiro’s memory filled in the rest. The crowd’s screams, the grunts of pain. The smell of stale sweat and fresh blood. The resistance his sword encountered when it found flesh.

His arm burned with white-hot energy, a heat that seemed to sear his flesh, though Keith assured him that a weapon like that, powered with Shiro’s own life-force, couldn’t hurt him.

Shiro hadn’t figured out how to tell Keith that the wounds it inflicted weren’t always physical. Shiro knew all too well what the arm meant—not a gift from the Galra, but a shackle. There was an override buried deep within the circuits. It had only been used once before, but Shiro would never forget the experience.

He doubted his opponent would ever forget this one.

“Let’s show this gnat what a Champion really is,” Keith said in his ear. “Unit One, finish him.”

For an instant, time slowed as Keith’s words slid through his veins like ice.

“ _You don’t know what it really means to be Champion. None of you.”_

A hazy memory, tinged gray with the kind of pain that made thought difficult. A silent room, hot with blinding white light. Silhouettes gathered around. Blood everywhere. Shiro’s blood. He’d thought he was dying at last, but the shadows had promised him strength. _To be a better Champion,_ they’d said, and Shiro had screamed his answer. Had Keith been there that day, or had he only heard of it later?

Either way, he’d asked, weeks later, after Shiro’s final match in the Arena, which had left him broken and defeated. After Shiro traded his prison cell for the uniform of a Galra soldier and threw his fate into Keith’s hands.

“ _You said none of us knew what it meant to be Champion. So tell me… what is a Champion?”_

“ _Someone who stands between his fellow prisoners and the fate the Galra had in store for them. I gave Zarkon a show, but he couldn’t make me take an innocent life.”_

Except of course they could. Haggar could make him do anything she wanted. Shiro wondered if that’s what Keith was trying to tell him. That the prisoner was going to die either way, and that Shiro could at least make it a more merciful death, could make the death mean something instead of sealing his own fate along with his opponent’s.

Fear coiled in his gut, a block of ice that made him shiver as he stared into the wide, frightened eyes of the prisoner.

_You can’t possibly expect me to do this, Keith. You know I can’t—I couldn’t--_

On the comms was nothing but silence. Shiro reminded himself that Keith was being watched. He couldn’t offer Shiro any more than he already had.

There was one other possibility, though. _Put on a show._ It was possible Keith had a plan of his own. Maybe he didn’t need Shiro to kill his opponent—only to convince Haggar he was willing to do it.

Shiro’s hand throbbed with lethal energy as he lowered it into a ready position. He hoped to god that he’d interpreted Keith’s order the right way, clung to his faith in Keith—as new and fragile as it was—and charged at the other prisoner.

He’d been told he looked like a monster when he fought in the Arena. Dead eyes, emotionless face, no hesitation. A fellow prisoner had called him a hero in a villain’s mask. Shiro hadn’t ever really believed it, but now, watching his opponent panic and try to run, he thought he knew what they meant.

He only hoped the villain was still a mask after today.

The prisoner’s back hit a pillar, stopping their retreat. Shiro raised his arm, his fingers angled toward the prisoner’s throat. He covered the space between them in a single step and thrust forward--

The lights in the Arena flickered and died as Shiro’s hand hit stone. In the pale purplish light his arm gave off, he saw his opponent on the ground, laughing, his hand pressed to his forehead.

“Talk about good timing.”

* * *

Keith barely had time to feel relieved—both that Shiro had understood what Keith was trying to say and that Keith had been right about the twist in Haggar’s test—when he realized his link to Shiro had been terminated. His earpiece put out a steady crackle of static that made Keith’s skin crawl.

He yanked the earpiece out and glared at it. “What the hell?”

“Congratulations, commander,” said Haggar, nonplussed. “You’ve passed the first stage of the test.”

“You mean the human passed,” Keith said, his system too frazzled to bother with manners.

Haggar grinned savagely at him. “Isn’t it all the same thing, really?”

Beside her, Tarrok looked rather more put out. “You don’t seem all that surprised.”

“That the Anuvin is one of ours?” Keith snorted. “Hardly. I hope the next part of this test is a bit more challenging. I didn’t come here to play games.”

In response, Haggar only nodded at the screen. When the power in the Arena had switched off, the view on the monitors had changed to an infrared feed. The figures of Shiro and the Anuvin crouched near the pillar Shiro had nearly cut in two with his last attack. The Anuvin must have had a microphone in addition to the earpiece, for their conversation came through the speakers clearly.

“What happened?” Shiro demanded. “Why are the lights off?”

The Anuvin stood, hands raised in a calming gesture. “I have a friend, an officer on this ship. He cut power—no lights, no locks, no cameras. We can escape.”

Shock washed over Shiro’s face. He lowered his hand. “What?”

“Come.” The Anuvin backed toward the doors, gesturing for Shiro to follow. “I know your story, Champion. You aren’t like them. Come with me. We can go home.”

Icy fingers of dread curled around Keith’s heart. This was—this was cruel. Shiro had dreamed of escape for so long. He’d never stopped searching for a way back to Earth. To offer it to him like this…

And Keith couldn’t be certain that Shiro wouldn’t fall for it. To go home, now, well ahead of the Galra fleet? To get away from his captors, to stop playing the part of a Galra soldier? Who wouldn’t want that? Keith wished he had a way to communicate with Shiro, even as he knew he would blow his own cover if he had that chance.

 _Please, Shiro,_ he thought. _Please._

The Anuvin jogged toward the door. Shiro hesitated by the pillar. Maybe he’d realized the trick. Maybe in a moment he would attack the Anuvin and put an end to the test.

Instead, he followed the Anuvin out the door.

Keith’s heart stopped beating for several ticks. He watched, mouth dry, as the monitor feed switched to a camera in the corridor. Shiro and the Anuvin made their way through the ship unimpeded—Tarrok must have cleared the area, but...why? Was the test not over yet? Why hadn’t anyone killed Shiro? Why hadn’t Haggar ordered Keith’s arrest?

Grimacing, Keith watched Shiro’s progress on the monitor. They could still pass this. Somehow. If Keith could only figure out a way--

They reached a bank of escape pods on the ship’s underbelly. The chamber was empty except for a single Galra, someone Keith didn’t recognize. He perked up as Shiro and the Anuvin arrived, glanced between them, then sighed in relief.

“You made it.”

The Anuvin turned to Shiro. “This is who I was telling you about. His name’s Dusan. He’s the one who put all this together.

“I see,” Shiro said.

Then he attacked. It happened too fast for Keith to track. One instant he was standing with the Anuvin at the door. The next he was on top of Dusan. The sound of Shiro’s hand hitting Dusan’s helmet reverberated through the room, and the Galra collapsed in a heap.

The Anuvin squealed in surprise and held up both hands as Shiro turned on him. “Wait--”

Shiro didn’t wait for the rest of the sentence. He spun, bringing his foot up in a high kick. His heel connected with the Anuvin’s snout, and they dropped to the ground beside Dusan.

Perfect silence filled the observation room for two ticks. Then power came back on in the escape pod bay. Shiro raised a hand to shield his eyes and said, “Unit One reporting in. I’ve neutralized a traitor in pod bay 16C.”

Tarrok’s growl of frustration made Keith jump. “He cheated,” Tarrok hissed, leveling a finger at Keith.

“How?” Keith demanded, smirking like he’d known how this would end. (Really, he felt more like passing out from relief.) “I wasn’t given any information about the test before I arrived, and you’ve been here with me ever since.”

Snarling, Tarrok began to argue.

Haggar was quicker. “This test is over. Congratulations, Commander. You’ve trained Unit One well.”

“Thank you.” Keith saluted briefly, and flashed Tarrok a wicked grin. “I know how to use the weapons at my disposal.”

Tarrok’s lip curled.

Haggar turned toward the door. “I’ll sign the transfer orders myself. You will report to the _Herald_ tomorrow morning.”

Breathing what he hoped wasn’t too obviously a sigh of relief, Keith fit the transmitter back into his ear. “Good work, out there, Unit One. Standby for assistance.”

* * *

“Shiro!”

Pidge jolted awake at the sound of Matt’s voice. After a moment of disorientation—they must have fallen asleep in the middle of examining the castle’s AI—they remembered where they were. Planet Arus. Castle of Lions. Med bay.

Matt sat on the floor where he’d collapsed, one hand pressed to his face. Pidge approached slowly.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Just a dream.”

He stood, and Pidge hurried to support him. He smiled down at them, but it was a distracted sort of smile; his eyes had that same far-off look Pidge was getting used to seeing. This time, though, they understood at least a little of what it meant.

 _Shiro_. Takashi Shirogane. The pilot of the Kerberos mission. Matt’s crewmate. His friend. They’d grown close while training for the Kerberos mission, or so Pidge gathered from Matt’s stories. Pidge could only assume the journey to Kerberos and subsequent capture had cemented their friendship.

But Shiro was still out there. Pidge’s father, too. What must it be like, to escape a nightmare only to realize your loved ones were still trapped inside it?

Pidge didn’t know how to reach across the gulf that seemed to separate them from their brother. They didn’t know if there would always be a part of Matt that was stuck in a Galra prison somewhere. They suspected that finding Shiro and Sam would help, but until then… Until then, Pidge would do their best.

“So what does it feel like?” Pidge asked. “The healing pod, I mean. Or, what did Coran call it? The cryo-replenisher.”

Matt blinked a few times at the pod behind him. “A little like sleep,” he said. “A little like anesthesia.” One hand clutched at the ragged collar of his shirt—his prison uniform, as Pidge now knew. The aliens they had rescued from the Galra warship, who were still sleeping in their own pods here in the med bay, all wore the same type of clothing. Pidge would have to ask Allura later if the castle had any spare clothes Matt could wear.

Matt’s collar pulled down as he clenched his fist, his lips turning down into a frown. Pidge caught the edge of a thin white line—a scar, now the only thing left of the wound below his collarbone that he’d acquired in his crash, the one the Garrison medic had sutured.

“It looks like it took care of your wounds really well, at least,” Pidge said brightly.

Matt tore his eyes away from the other pods. He glanced at Pidge, then bent and pulled up his right pant leg. The scar there looked much the same as it had before—a knotted, uneven line of discolored flesh. It started just below his kneecap and curved down and around his shin, ending deep in his calf muscle.

Pidge winced.

“I guess that one’s too old by now,” Matt said. He quickly covered the scar again, ruffled Pidge’s hair, and headed for the door. “Even the Alteans weren’t miracle workers.”

“Guess not. Are you hungry? I was thinking I might find some--” They glanced at their watch. “Dinner, I guess.”

Matt shrugged. “Sure, I’ll come. Not sure how appetizing it’ll be, if it’s all like that food goo Hunk found last night.”

Wrinkling their nose, Pidge nodded. They hadn’t eaten last night; the food goo looked too slimy to be edible. Now that their stomach was empty, though, they figured it was time to face the gallows. Even slimy, mushy, tasteless goo was preferable to starving to death in a space castle. Pidge just hoped they’d be able to force something down.

When they reached the kitchen, Matt stopped in the doorway. “What the heck?”

Pidge entered just behind Matt and found a massive operation underway. Hunk stood at the stove manning two pots and a skillet, Lance a few feet away chopping...vegetables? Maybe? Hunk had found an apron somewhere, which was fortunate, as it was covered in bright green food goo and something that looked a little bit like runny mustard.

The smells, though—Pidge’s stomach grumbled at the first sniff. It was like baked potatoes, homemade pasta, and stir fry all in one, with a layer of citrus over the top.

Lance looked up and grinned at the pair, waving a knife in greeting. “Hey, guys! Hungry?”

“I am now,” Matt said. He sniffed a bowl of—well, Pidge assumed the base was regular old food goo, but there were so many other things mixed in it was hard to be sure. “What is all this?” They leaned on the counter with the finished dishes, standing on their toes for a better view.

“Experimentation,” Hunk said. He switched the stove off and grabbed some more bowls. One pot yielded some kind of soup, the broth slightly unnerving with its greenish tinge. The other held something thin and brittle like a tumbleweed, mixed with lumpy vegetables that might have been Arusian carrots, if carrots on Arus were purple.

Hunk stirred the contents of the skillet one more time, then spooned the contents over the purple carrot-and-tumbleweed salad. It was a dark reddish sauce with unidentifiable chunks in it.

Lance loaded his sliced veggies onto a plate and added it to the buffet along the counter. “We got sick of sitting around in the castle,” he explained. “So I dragged Hunk out to look for alien herbs and whatever.”

“Coran’s pretty sure this is all edible,” Hunk added. “No promises on the taste because, uh, I haven’t ever worked with alien ingredients before.”

“No,” Pidge said dryly, propping their chin in their hands. “I’m shocked.”

Hunk laughed, shrugging out of his apron. “Anyway, it gave me something to do. No reason to eat the same weird goo every day, right?”

Pidge hummed an agreement and picked up a spoon. Matt had been even faster, and he moaned as he stuck a spoonful of soup in his mouth.

“Good?” Hunk asked nervously, scratching his cheek.

“This is _amazing_ ,” Matt said. “Oh my god.”

Pidge had to agree. It didn’t taste much like anything they’d had before, but it was a hundred times better than they’d expected. “Would it be way too much to ask you to make all the food? Cause I’ll take this over food goo any day.”

Hunk blushed, and Lance thumped him on the back. They traded looks. Pidge felt like they were missing something, but it was hard to care with so much more food to try. A moment later Hunk and Lance had joined them anyway, bumping elbows and reaching over each other to get to what they wanted.

It was amazing, Pidge thought, how a good meal could make a place feel a little more like home.

* * *

Shiro had already changed out of his armor by the time Keith returned to their quarters. Shiro looked up, attempting a smile to match Keith’s wry smirk.

“Some test, huh?” Keith said.

Shiro laughed shakily. “Yeah.” It sounded lame, but Shiro couldn’t bring himself to say more. He couldn’t tell Keith how much he’d wished for the prisoner to be telling the truth. A way out. A way home. There were very few things he wouldn’t trade for that chance.

_What about Keith?_

Shiro closed his eyes at the thought—the same question that had plagued him since the end of the test. If it had been real, if he could have escaped, would he have gone? Knowing that it would likely mean Keith’s execution? Or had Shiro already tied himself so tightly to this strange, awkward, earnest Galra prince that he would give up a shot at freedom to save Keith’s life?

Shiro didn’t know the answer. He didn’t even know which choice was the right one. Keith had saved his life once already; Shiro didn’t want to betray that. But wasn’t it a little messed up that he felt so indebted to a Galra—one of the people who had made Shiro’s life a living hell for over a year?

He almost had to be grateful to Haggar for taking the choice away from him. Once he’d realized the supposed escape was all part of the test, the solution was really quite simple.

Pass the test. Live. Saving Keith was saving himself, so he didn’t have to think too hard about the implications of their alliance.

“Hey.”

Shiro looked up as Keith sat on the bunk across from him. “What is it?”

Keith stared at his hands. His ears lay flat against his head. “I wanted to thank you.”

Guilt shot through Shiro. “For what?”

“For trusting me,” Keith said. “I know it wasn’t easy, being back in the Arena, me telling you to kill that Anuvin. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d refused. But...you listened. You trusted me.”

Shiro stared at him, stunned. Then he smiled. “Of course I trusted you. We’re a team.”

“You barely know me.”

Shiro only shook his head. “We’re trying to take down a ten thousand-year-old empire and the immortal monster who runs it.” He reached out, clapping Keith on the shoulder. “If we don’t have each other, then what do we have?”

Keith stared at the hand on his shoulder, then gave Shiro a small smile. “A whole lot of blackmail material, that’s what.”

Laughing, Shiro gave Keith’s shoulder a shove and laid back on his bunk. “Funny. At least tell me that we’re done with the tests for a while.”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “Haggar’s finalizing the transfer now. So, congratulations, I guess. We’re headed to the front lines.”

 _The front lines_ , Shiro thought grimly. More fighting, more death. What were the odds Shiro could keep his hands clean through all that? But maybe, just maybe, he would come through it all alive and make it home.

It was something to hope for, anyway.


	5. Leifor's Dive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Shiro and Keith faced Haggar's test and won the right to join Commander Orgul on the front lines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for this chapter: This is an emotionally charged chapter and depicts several instances of panic attacks and flashbacks. There's also a brief scene that includes implied torture.
> 
> To skip the torture, stop reading at "The scalpel clinked against the metal tray" and jump down to "What the hell is your problem?!"

Lance yelped as a laser clipped Blue’s back leg. The lion shuddered and veered to one side, slamming into the Green Lion.

“Ow! Hey!” Pidge’s voice was strained—not that Lace could blame them. After nearly an hour of running around dodging lasers and trying without success to form Voltron, they were all a little stressed.

But the castle’s defenses didn’t let up, and a new line of lasers was marching toward him. Lance got his lion’s feet under him, floundered for a minute as three different alarms blared, flipped a few switches in a frantic attempt to figure out what was wrong and if it was going to kill him. Was that a heat warning? Pressure? Had his engine taken a hit? Where _was_ the engine on this thing? He was very much _not_ an engineer, and that was biting him in the ass right now.

Another explosion, this one dangerously close, ripped Lance’s attention away from the flashing lights and he punched the controls. Blue shot forward, and the lasers thundered down on the rock where he’d been a split second before. Something tickled the back of his mind, a kind of annoyed grumble that might have been the lion.

Coran’s voice filled the cockpit. “Perhaps we should call it a day, eh, Princess?”

“Yes,” Hunk said at once. “God, yes.”

“No.” Allura’s voice was as scary as her lion, which sailed over Blue and zig-zagged across the pockmarked plain. Lance had thought this place looked bad when they’d first arrived on Arus. Now it looked like a war zone. Hell, it _was_ a war zone, “training” or not. Coran wasn’t pulling any punches. Maybe that was an Altean thing, because Allura wasn’t backing down, either.

“Everyone, back in formation. We’re not through until we form Voltron.”

Lance grit his teeth, his eyes drifting back to the flashing red lights. That probably wasn’t good. He should do something about that, right? “Have you considered that this might work better if, I don’t know, we had some freaking clue how it works?”

Allura’s face glowered at Lance from the video feed in the corner of Blue’s display. Lance stuck his tongue out at her, but that distracted him just long enough for the stubby remains of a bridge support pillar to spring up in his path. There was a clang, then a moment where the world seemed to turn on its ear. Two new alarms joined the cacophony as Blue skidded to a stop on the broken ground.

“Lance, _focus_ ,” Allura chided.

“I’m trying! Have you _seen_ how many controls these things have? I’ve got a pack of monkeys screeching in my ears and more flashing lights than an arcade! Excuse me if I’m having a hard time mastering the _actual alien spaceship_!”

Well, _now_ he’d done it. Allura had this cold, hard, dangerous look on her face. It reminded Lance, honestly, of the look the Garrison instructors got when Pidge used to correct them about the Kerberos mission.

Allura drew in a sharp breath, no doubt preparing to tear into Lance, but Hunk was faster.

“Hey, look, no offense, but we’ve been at this for a long time. Maybe we should, I don’t know, switch tactics?”

There was a long, awkward moment of silence, and then Coran spoke up.

“This might be a good time to mention that I have just a few more diagnostics to run on the castle, _but…_ I’ll have to shut down the castle’s defenses to run them.”

On the bright side, Lance wasn’t the only one who could tease that murderous glare out of the princess. Allura looked like she might have torn Coran’s mustache right of his face if he’d been in the Black Lion with her.

“Other team building exercises might help,” Coran offered, almost as though he didn’t notice the way Allura was looking at him. “If we come back to this later, we might have more luck.”

No one said anything for several long seconds. Lance held his breath, and he had a feeling he wasn’t the only one. The lasers were still raining down on them, so they couldn’t risk slowing down, but for just a moment everything seemed to wait for Allura’s answer.

Then she sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. Shut it down, Coran.”

* * *

The paladins had about five minutes of relief after Allura called off the training exercise Hunk had decided to call the Death Run.

And, see, here was the thing: when someone said “team building exercises,” that meant a very specific thing. It was Two Truths and a Lie, it was three-legged racing, it was puzzles where one person had the instruction and the other had the pieces. Team building was the tedious but ultimately harmless ritual that kicked off every summer camp of Hunk's childhood.

It was _not_ gladiator death matches with alarmingly lax safety regulations.

Even before they started, Hunk had identified a dozen accidents waiting to happen, starting with the fact that none of them had had more than five minutes’ practice with their bayards (which consisted mostly of _guns_ ), and ending with the question of whether this was still calibrated for Altean warriors instead of human teenagers.

Actually, that was probably the more pressing question, because Allura was clearly in a class of her own. As soon as the gladiator robot dropped from the ceiling, she sprang into action with a punch that sent the robot skidding back.

“Daaaamn,” Lance said, gaping at Allura. “Beauty, charm, terrifying combat skills... I think I’m in love.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Don’t just stand there. Pidge, Matt, you’re with me. Hunk and Lance, spread out. Don’t let the enemy slip away.”

Right. Easy. Just do it, Hunk, no big deal. Groaning to himself, Hunk raised his bayard and circled to the left, while Lance went the opposite direction.

The gladiator leaped back as Allura attacked again, then veered away and headed in Hunk’s direction. His hands shook as he aimed his canon. He’d never used anything like this before. It was heavy—too heavy to hold above his waist, which meant aiming was a joke. He just had to point and shoot.

The kickback was bigger than he’d expected, throwing off his aim and making him stumble. Allura gasped and dropped to the floor, a spray of laser discs arcing over her head.

“Sorry!” Hunk called, releasing the trigger. _Oh, god. That could have been bad. That could have been_ really _bad._ He felt the panic start to close around his chest, cold and creeping toward his throat.

The gladiator was still heading for him, but he didn’t dare open fire again, not with his friends fanning out around him.

Lance had no such qualms. Shouting Hunk’s name, he fired his rifle. Unfortunately, Pidge had chosen that moment to try to sneak up on the gladiator. Only their quick reflexes and the energy shield in their armor saved them.

The gladiator saw their distraction and changed course. Hunk called out a warning and raised his weapon—no. If he did that, he’d almost certainly hit Pidge. How much damage would a freaking _canon_ do to someone Pidge’s size? How much could their armor really handle? What if Hunk _killed_ them? What if--?

“Pidge!”

Matt sprinted forward, his bayard forgotten at his side. Pidge half turned, eyes widening as they caught sight of the gladiator looming over them. Matt arrived a split second before the gladiator and wrapped himself around Pidge, grunting as the gladiator’s staff connected with his ribs. Hunk’s heart seized. The staff may have hit Matt in the side, but Pidge was still ducked down behind their shield—that could have been a head injury. Why the _hell_ was this thing allowed to go for head shots? Did Alteans not know what a traumatic brain injury was?

Allura caught the gladiator’s follow-up blow on her forearm as the world around Hunk began to tilt. The hollow _clunk_ of Allura’s fist against the gladiator’s torso was an explosion in Hunk’s ears and he flinched away. What would have happened if Matt hadn’t been there? What if Pidge had _died_? How would they explain that to Mrs. Holt? _Sorry, ma’am, I guess none of us saw the problem with letting a fourteen-year-old face off against a killer robot with no training, our bad!_

“Hunk! Draw it off us!”

Hunk’s mind had gone foggy, his breath ragged in his ears. He felt oddly detached from his body, like it was somebody else fighting the killer robot, somebody else’s friend who probably hadn’t realized how close they’d come to dying. That was real pain on Matt’s face, twisting it into the face of a stranger as he held his side. Pidge was looking up at him like he was dying. Hell, maybe he was dying. Maybe they’d _all_ be dead in another five minutes. Did this thing have _any_ safeties built into it, or would it keep going until it was beating on a bunch of bloody corpses?

It was almost a relief when the gladiator backed away from Allura to attack Hunk again. He panicked, firing off a burst of lasers that almost hit Lance and barely fazed the robot.

Then it was on him. The staff swept his feet out from under him and he landed, hard, his bayard clattering to the ground and reverting to its inactive state.

Hunk didn’t bother trying to get up.

He knew all too well what was happening to him. The tightness in his chest, the fuzzing at the edge of his vision, the way he couldn’t seem to draw in enough air. A panic attack. Unfortunately, knowing didn’t do him any good. He’d careened right off the cliff into the chasm of nightmares and worst case scenarios, and no amount of positive thinking was going to stop his descent.

Why the _hell_ had he thought he could be a soldier?

He squeezed his eyes shut as the sounds of battle faded around him. What was Allura going to say? Would she realize her mistake? Would she take Yellow away from him?

Funny, wasn’t it, that he still wanted to be a paladin even though he was so terrible at it? But he was pretty sure the only thing holding the panic at bay was the distant rumble, like a cat purring against his breastbone. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that it was Yellow, doing her best to calm him. Hunk knew for a fact he wouldn’t survive out here without her.

Shit. If he wasn’t a paladin anymore, did that mean he would have to leave? Would Allura let him go home? Or would he just have to wander the universe alone, hoping he didn’t get picked up by the Galra? Were there any safe planets left? Would Zarkon let him run away, or would Hunk have a big target painted on his back because he’d briefly been a paladin of Voltron? Would he scrape out a life for himself on some asteroid, only to have Galra soldiers kick in the door one day and haul him away?

“What was _that?_ ”

Allura’s voice startled him back to the present. She sounded pissed, which only made Hunk’s pulse ratchet up a few more notches. Much more and it was going to crap out. Just throw its hands up and bow out, leave him to rot. It might actually be a relief.

Lance, at least, sounded suitably indignant about Allura’s attitude. “What was that? What was _that_? That was you! Trying to kill us!”

The fact that everyone was just standing around, all of them glaring at Allura, told Hunk the fight was probably over, so he forced himself to sit up, put his head between his knees, and focus on breathing. He’d cleared the first hurdle by not dying. Now it was time to try to soothe the feral beast of his anxiety.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

“That simulation was set on a level fit for a _child_ ,” Allura hissed. “I though the paladins of Voltron would be able to handle that much, at least.”

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Hunk reached instinctively for his pocket, where he kept his Ativan. Didn’t work so well with the armor on. Panic welled up again inside him, a rising awareness that there would be no relief if things reached the tipping point. Not unless he managed to coordinate himself long enough to get back to the lockers where he’d left his regular clothes.

In through the nose.

Out through the mouth.

Breathe.

Don’t think.

Breathe.

“We’re not soldiers, Princess,” Matt said. “You can’t just throw us in a fight and hope for the best.”

In. Out. Think of something soothing. Think of the beach. Think of grilling with Mom and Uncle Eli. Think of how far from home he was, all the things keeping him from his family, all the ways he could die before he ever saw them again.

No.

Breathe.

“Hey, look,” Lance said, and Hunk didn’t have to look to know that he’d gone loose, flinging his hands out to emphasize his words. “I get it, we’re all badass heroes of the universe now. There are gonna be fights, and lasers, and explosions, and pretty girls. We need to be prepared, right? I get it. I _totally_ get it. But that’s a whole separate thing that we’re gonna need to take, like, baby steps on. This bayard thing?” He paused, presumably to hold his bayard up for Allura to see. “It’s awesome. But also, I have no freaking clue how it works. So chill with the killer robots, maybe?”

Hunk almost laughed. Almost. He was still, perhaps, wound a little tighter than normal. Every muscle still strained with adrenaline. But breathing was easier now. Lance had a way of making everything seem a little less like impending doom and a little more like a grand cosmic joke.

He probably didn’t mean to, but Hunk was grateful for his rambling all the same.

Allura heaved a sigh. “All right, _fine_. Let’s try something a little more relaxed.”

* * *

“Mind meld?” Pidge asked warily as they slipped on the headset. The rigid plastic frame and round discs were uncomfortable enough; they weren’t sure they wanted to see what Allura meant by _mind meld._

She knelt across the circle from Pidge, her hair pulled back into a long, silver braid to accommodate her own headset. Her eyes were closed, her hands resting lightly on her thighs. “Yes,” she said in a sedate tone. What, was she trying to meditate? “When we form Voltron we will all be connected, fighting as one unit. This system was designed to emulate that.”

“Originally it was meant to improve communication between the paladins,” Coran offered. He stood just outside the circle by the controls, ready to direct the exercise. Hunk eyed the headset nervously before settling it into place—the last of the five to do so. “It should also help you five to forge a new bond.”

“If we can learn to synchronize our thoughts, it should go a long way toward uniting us on the battlefield and, with luck, forming Voltron.”

 _Yeah, yeah, yeah,_ Pidge thought. _It’s always forming Voltron with her._

A sharp spike of irritation cut through their thoughts, making Pidge jump. Allura opened her eyes and gave Pidge a hard look that left Pidge the uncomfortable suspicion that she’d sensed their thoughts. Mind-meld, huh? Great.

“I cannot stress how vital it is that we reach our full potential. Voltron is the universe’s only hope; we can’t begin to oppose Zarkon until we have Voltron at our disposal.”

Flushing, Pidge stared at their lap. Now that they were aware of it, they could feel the others’ minds brushing up against their own, half glimpsed like bats against a backdrop of stars. It was a claustrophobic sort of feeling, the awareness that there were no barriers between them. Lance’s manic thoughts were a rapid-fire _rat-a-tat-tat_ against Pidge’s focus, a thousand prodding fingers demanding attention. Hunk’s lurked at the back of Pidge’s mind, a tension that oozed into them and set their teeth on edge. Allura’s mind loomed over the others, a silent judge.

“Clear your minds,” Coran said from behind Pidge. “Focus on your lions. Picture them in your mind.”

Easier said than done. It was hard to focus on anything but the other presences in their mind. Matt was a familiar presence, but tinged dark with memories that Pidge kept well away from. Allura and Coran could talk all they wanted about the paladins being of one mind, with no secrets and all that, but there was such a thing as privacy and Pidge wasn’t going to be the one to violate it.

 _Green,_ Pidge thought. _Think of the Green Lion._ They had spent enough time in the hangar the last few days that they had memorized every line of Green’s form. The shield on her back, the shape of her snout. Picturing her should have been easy—but not with the others crowding up against Pidge’s mind.

They were questions, unasked, unanswerable, and they brought swift punishment if they went ignored. Pidge had never been good at seeing those questions, not in time to give a suitable response. This was no different—no. It was _worse._ The questions were still there, but closer than ever, tangible, like oily shadows sliding through their mind.

They still didn’t know what anyone wanted of them.

“Almost there. Just one to go. You can do it, Pidge.”

Coran’s voice cut through Pidge’s tenuous concentration like a bolt of lightning. The shadows brushing up against their mind suddenly became spotlights, each pointing unwanted attention at the inside of Pidge’s mind.

Something crawled beneath their skin, restless and tight, and Pidge squeezed their eyes tighter. It didn’t help. Their focus now was outside themself, on the weight of their eyelids, on the heat of their shirt against their sweat-slick back, on the physical _presence_ of the others, silent except for breathing that expanded to fill the room. Reaching their thoughts toward Pidge.

Pidge panicked, slamming a door on the mental connection. It severed with a jolt that Pidge could hear in the way the others’ voices hitched.

“Pidge,” Allura said sharply. “Keep your mind open. A paladin of Voltron cannot function in isolation from their teammates.”

 _Then maybe you picked the wrong paladins,_ Pidge wanted to say. Instead they bit their tongue. There were still a thousand volts of electricity coursing through their body, a restless energy that built in the back of their throat and prickled at their eyes. They knew if they spoke, it was over. If they tried to defend themself, the dams would burst and anything that came out would be fighting against a tide of tears.

_Keep it together._

Matt’s hand brushed against Pidge’s shoulder, and they offered him a smile—watery, no doubt. Matt’s lips turned downward.

 _It’s been a long day,_ Pidge thought at him. _I’m just tired. I’m fine. I’m fine._

“I don’t know if this was a good idea,” Matt started, but Pidge raised a leg and kicked him in the knee. “Ow.” He rubbed his knee, glaring at Pidge. “Okay, fine. I take it back. Let’s...try it again, I guess.”

Yeah, that lasted all of five seconds. There were just too many people crowding around inside Pidge’s head. They weren’t _looking_ for secrets (Pidge didn’t think they were looking for secrets), but they were there, brushing up against embarrassing memories and painful memories and things that probably didn’t need to be kept secret, but it didn’t matter. Pidge didn’t like people knowing things they weren’t supposed to know.

Groaning, Pidge ripped the headset off and tossed it across the room.

This time, Allura didn’t even bother to argue. She glared at Pidge, sighed, and stood. “Let’s take a break.”

* * *

Allura and Coran disappeared somewhere together for twenty minutes, leaving the other paladins to their own devices—which mostly meant draping themselves across chairs and sofas and stewing in their own problems. Pidge’s nose was glued to their computer screen, Lance and Hunk were whispering to each other in the far corner, and Matt…

Matt was staring at his hands, wondering what the hell he was doing.

He didn’t get very far before Coran’s voice came on the comms telling them to meet in the dining hall for lunch. As they all headed that way, Matt watched Pidge out of thecorner of his eye. They were still withdrawn, their hand still tapping against their thigh with a frantic pulse, but their eyes had lost the panicked look that meant they were on the edge of overload.

Matt knew better than to try to talk to Pidge yet, though. They would rejoin the conversation when they were ready. So he listened to Hunk and Lance trash-talking Allura. Part of him wanted to stop them—she was only trying to do what she felt was necessary—but if it kept them from swarming Pidge, he was willing to let it slide.

_Some paladin you are._

When they arrived at the dining hall, they found Allura and Coran waiting. Neither apologized for the past few hours, but the impressive spread boded well for reconciliation.

“Smells delicious,” Matt said, a tacit peace offering. Some effort on the humans’ part was warranted, after all. They were a team, and maybe Allura was demanding too much of them, but they did have the whole Galra empire to worry about.

Five chairs lined one side of the table, Allura already seated in the center. Lance quickly claimed one of the end chairs, shooting Allura a sullen look as he sat. Sighing, Matt took the seat to Allura’s right, answering her thin smile with one of his own. Pidge silently sat beside Matt, and Hunk dropped into the last seat, between Allura and Lance.

The silence that followed didn’t have time to get awkward, for almost as soon as Hunk’s back hit the chair, Coran produced a remote with a flourish, let out a self-satisfied _ha-ha!_ , and pressed a button. Metal plates embedded in the arms of Matt’s chair leaped up and wrapped themselves around his wrists. Sparking blue energy tethers flickered to life, yanking Matt’s arms to either side, where his shackles clinked against more metal like--

_The scalpel clinked against the metal tray as the gloved hand set it aside. A scream built in Matt’s lungs and he choked on it, tears and bile and the echoes of his last scream pressing it back down inside him._

_Hot white light shown down on him from above, beading sweat on his forehead. He thrashed, straining against the shackles around his wrists and ankles, twisting his neck in a futile effort to break free of the straps holding his head in place._

_No good._

_His skin burned with fresh blood. From the scalpel? From the shackles that bit into his flesh each time he fought for freedom? Pain was becoming the universe, and it was impossible to distinguish one hurt from another._

_His heart beat stubbornly on, racing from agony to agony, the pain a second heartbeat chasing the first. It pulsed within him, a vice in his chest, a void in his ears, empty white starbursts across his vision. The pain was a living thing, and with every breath it vowed it would never release him._

“What the _hell_ is your problem?!”

Pidge.

That was Pidge.

That was—Matt’s heart seized. What was Pidge doing there?

His hand moved—no. Something else moved his hand. Matt was aware of the movement, dimly, distantly. He was floating beneath the surface of the ocean, and Pidge was up in open air. Pidge was moving his hand. They were connected at the wrist, shackled together.

Pidge was shaking. Why was that so clear, when everything else came to him through a layer of gauze?

It was like his entire chest had caved in, and now the only things keeping him upright were the chair beneath him and the arms bound to his on either side.

He felt the eyes on him, shocked eyes, frightened eyes, judging eyes. _Don’t look at me_ , he wanted to say. _Don’t._ But there was a disconnect between his mind and his tongue, a disconnect that kept forming itself into the shape of an operating room in a Galra prison and--

He squeezed his eyes shut against a light that wasn’t there. Someone was calling his name. His breath coiled beneath his ribs, thin and feeble, a death rattle of someone who couldn’t die. The Pain was alive inside him again, thrumming through his bones, a line of fire at his collar and in his side and on his shin and a nebula behind his eyes.

His arms fell limp into his lap. The supports were gone. The shackles were gone. Matt pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“Matt...”

Pidge reached out for him—he heard it in their voice, felt it in the goosebumps rising along his arm in anticipation of the touch.

His legs propelled him up and back from the table. There was a commotion behind him, voices and scraping chairs, but Matt was already at the door. He fumbled with the controls, his hands shaking so badly his fingers couldn’t find the button.

Then the door was open, and Matt staggered out into the corridor, desperate to get away from the dining hall and the memories that had taken root.

* * *

Pidge shot Allura a look of pure loathing as they headed out the door after their brother. They didn’t bother to yell at her about the cruel, idiotic, awful excuse for a bonding exercise, though she almost would have preferred that to the silence they left behind.

Coran still held the remote with which he’d deactivated the restraints, and from the look in his eyes, he felt every bit as terrible as Allura. Hunk and Lance’s eyes were fixed on the door, but Allura wasn’t stupid enough to think this had done anything to improve their opinion of her.

She stood, before either of them could find their voices, and clasped her hands at her waist. “I think we’re done for today.” They were certainly looking at her now, but Allura didn’t let their gazes unnerve her. Her father had trained her that well, at least. A princess didn’t have the luxury of cracking under the weight of her own mistakes. “You’re free to go. If you see Matt, tell him I would like to apologize, when he’s ready to see me.”

They said nothing, not that Allura expected them to. She waited just long enough to be polite, then turned and left through the kitchen door.

The instant the door closed behind her, she sagged against the counter, pressing one hand to her neck. Her pulse fluttered beneath her fingers, and she glared at her reflection in a mixing bowl.

“What were you _thinking_?” she hissed to no one. She’d known about Matt’s past. She’d seen for herself the way it still haunted him. She should have realized what her actions might cause. If she’d just stopped to think—but that was the problem, wasn’t it? She’d been so wrapped up in her own insecurities, struggling to fill the role of the black paladin _and_ the role of guide, that she hadn’t paused to consider the people she was trying to lead.

They were children, not soldiers. The fact that they were paladins didn’t change that.

She’d tossed them out the airlock without a helmet and expected them to live.

The door hissed open behind her. She recognized Coran’s presence and leaned into him when he wrapped and arm around her shoulders.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“We both have.”

Her vision blurred, and the ache of guilt bled away into something deeper. A hollow, lonely feeling that had dogged her steps ever since she’d emerged from cryostasis.

_I’m not ready for this._

It should have been Alfor here training the new paladins. Instructing them, uniting them. But Alfor was gone, his life sacrificed to spare Allura’s. It didn’t matter if she didn’t know what she was doing. She was all they had. The last of her people. The last of the House of Lions…

She wasn’t ready to face that fact, and the hungry void that accompanied it, so she straightened up, wiped her eyes, and forced a smile for Coran. His brow furrowed as she did, of course. He knew her too well. She couldn’t expect her royal mask to fool him.

“We should probably give them some space for now, shouldn’t we?” she asked as brightly as she could.

Coran eyed her for a moment, as though trying to decide if it was worth it to peel back the mask and confront the real problem. Eventually he sighed, giving her a wry smile of his own. “That’s probably for the best, Princess.”

She nodded. “Very well. I’m going to take the Black Lion out for some training. Call me if anything happens.”

* * *

_There was no way to track how long Matt spent in that dark, cramped cell. He didn’t know how often the meals were delivered, or if it they came at random intervals. There was no light, natural or artificial, that might help him track the days. He slept fitfully and lay awake for eternities in between, his eyes playing tricks on him in the darkness, his body aching from the close confines and the half-healed wounds._

_Eventually, though, he was brought out into the cells where they kept the other prisoners. The lights made his eyes water so much he couldn’t see where he was going, and his legs refused to support his weight. In the end, the Galra had to drag him to his new home, a long, narrow cell just tall enough for him to stand in and already occupied by three other prisoners—not that Matt could make out much more than their cowering forms._

_The guards threw him through the door, and he landed in a heap on a floor that smelled like urine. He was too weak to care about the slamming door behind him or the electronic tone of the lock engaging._

_A few moments passed. Matt didn’t try to move. Even just lying like this, loosely curled on his side, made everything hurt; moving would have been pure agony. Besides, what was the point? Lie on the floor or sit against the wall, it made no difference. Galra prisoners had only one choice: to suffer._

_Something warm and solid, thin like a rod, slid under Matt’s shoulders, lifting him off the floor. Groaning, he opened his eyes and squinted up at the figure bending over him. It looked like an enormous centipede, though maybe that was an unfair comparison. Matt had never seen a centipede look so kind._

“ _Shhh.” The alien’s voice hissed through a pair of mandibles set low on the flat, triangular head. “Moving is...maybe not the best idea after a nightmare like that. You will take time to recover.”_

_Matt’s head was too foggy to produce a response. All he could do was marvel at the alien’s mesmerizing voice. Shiro had theorized that the Galra implanted their prisoners with some kind of translator so they could understand the guards’ demands, and maybe more importantly, so they couldn’t conspire in their own language._

_Until this point, Matt had only half believed it. Now, though, he could hear the hisses of the alien’s language through the translation, like static on a radio. It was thoroughly disconcerting, and if Matt had had more energy, he might have commented on it._

_Instead, he only watched. His eyes were slowly reacquainting themselves with the dim light in the cell, which let him pick out more details on his fellow prisoners. The alien holding him had a hardened, greenish outer shell like a beetle’s and stood on six legs; two smaller arms supported Matt as the pair made their way to the back of the cell, where the alien offered Matt a drink of stale water. Two of the alien’s six black eyes were cloudy and scarred by an old, ugly wound._

_The other two prisoners huddled in separate corners, one small and furry with almost rabbit-like ears, the other about Matt’s size, purple-skinned with three eyes and an extra pair of legs. Both avoided Matt’s eyes and sank lower against the wall._

“ _Why?” Matt’s voice came out like a rasp, weak and faint. He took another sip of water and tried again. “Why let me out?” Through the haze of pain, fatigue, and confusion, words seemed a far-off thing, and he wasn’t sure whether his question had made any sense._

_The alien clicked something Matt took for a sound of pity. “The Pit—the cell you came from—the Galra use for initiation. Each prisoner goes in until the next comes. Some stay only a week. Others, much longer.”_

_Matt almost asked how long he’d spent in the Pit, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort of speaking. Even if the other prisoners knew, knowing wouldn’t help Matt. One week or ten, it was a hell he’d just as soon put behind him._

_So instead he sat up as straight as he could, still leaning heavily against the centipede alien, and offered a thin smile. “My name’s Matt,” he said._

“ _Simsill,” said the other. “Now rest. I will watch over you.”_

_Maybe it was his exhaustion, or maybe it was that Simsill’s words reminded him of Shiro. Either way, Matt’s mind soon sank into a restless haze of pain and nightmares. It was a poor excuse for sleep, but it passed the time and swept the horrors of the past away from him._

_Sometimes, that was the only thing that mattered._

* * *

Matt sat on the edge of a cliff, looking out over the land below. The castle was situated above a green valley where rolling hills tumbled down toward a crystal clear lake. A mile or so to the south, the hills began to climb, cresting in a low ridge of mountains. The land beyond was dry and barren, and Matt could see the mangled corpse of Sendak’s warship in the disance.

No matter where he went, it seemed he couldn’t escape the ghosts of his past.

“Matt…?”

Turning, Matt offered Pidge a smile. They stood fifteen feet away at the end of the bridge from the castle, the reprogrammed drone they called Rover hovering beside them. Pidge glanced at it awkwardly.

“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” they explained. “I had Rover scan for lifeforms, and that lead me out there. Should I...” They jabbed their thumb over their shoulder.

Matt patted the ground beside him. Pidge sat, legs crossed. They attempted to speak twice, but no words came out.

Eventually, Matt broke the silence. “Sorry for worrying you.”

Pidge scowled. “You’re not the one who needs to apologize.”

With a sigh, Matt lay back on the grass. The sky above him looked impossibly Earth-like: a brilliant blue spotted with fluffy white clouds; a sun about the right size, if a little too red, sinking toward the horizon. The breeze that caught Matt’s hair smelled like the ocean.

“Don’t be too mad at her, Pidge. She just lost everything she knew, and she’s trying to keep that from happening to anyone else.”

For a moment, Pidge was silent. Then they flopped down next to Matt. “When you put it like that, it’s hard to think of her as a jerk.”

Matt smiled. “That’s kind of the point. I know she’s tough, and I know her exercises have been hard on all of us, but she’s trying.” He paused, idly scratching his chest. “Actually, I bet if you and I come up with our own team building exercise, she’d be happy to give it a try.”

“You think?” Pidge sounded skeptical, but they heaved a defeated sigh. “Fine. Later. I don’t want to think about that stuff right now.”

 _Me either,_ Matt thought. But all he said was, “Fair enough.”

They sat in silence for a while, watching the clouds drift by overhead. It was a nice change of pace, Matt thought. The closest thing to home he’d come in a year. There were only a few things missing: his mother, for one; he’d been gone so long he barely remembered what she looked like. His father, still out there somewhere, still in Galra hands. And…

“Did the other prisoners say anything about Shiro?”

Pidge went eerily still, which told Matt the answer was _yes_. He turned. Pidge was staring at him with wide eyes and a mouth like a fish on a hook.

He frowned. “I recognized some of them, but Shiro isn’t here. I figure someone must have some idea what happened to him.”

“I...don’t know,” Pidge finally said. “They just said he was gone. Well. I guess really what they said was ‘he’s not a prisoner here anymore,’ which sounded kind of ominous, really, but we didn’t have time to ask what they meant. If not for this whole _training_ whatever, I’d be down in the cryopod room waiting for them to wake up.”

“Yeah.” Matt didn’t know what else to say—at least until a new thought occurred to him. “What if we don’t have to wait?”

Pidge turned their head. “What?”

Matt sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes found the wreckage out in the desert. A Galra warship—the same warship where Matt and Shiro had been held, as far as Matt could tell. If the computers hadn’t been destroyed in the battle and subsequent crash, they would almost certainly have the information Matt needed. Where Shiro and Sam had been sent, what had happened to them in the last year.

Tentative hope stirred in his chest. He shot Pidge what he hoped was an easy smile. “You up for a hike?”

* * *

The Black Lion bucked under Allura’s hands as she tucked into a tight reversal. Her balance was off, and she came out of her turn twisted, her head angled considerably below target. “Quiznak,” she muttered, dragging the lion back onto her intended course.

Maybe it was her imagination, but the lion almost seemed to be fighting her. It was absurd, of course. The Black Lion had accepted Allura as her pilot. There was no reason to think she would change her mind now.

The problem, Allura knew, was her own. The Black Lion could only give as much as Allura was ready to accept.

Allura wasn’t certain she’d ever be ready.

“Coran, are you there?”

“Yes, Princess?” Coran’s reply came quickly enough that Allura suspected he’d been watching her flight. She supposed it was only natural. King Alfor had charged Coran with Allura’s safety, and he’d never been one to shirk his duties.

Still, he could at least pretend not to hover. “I’m going to try Leifor’s Dive.”

There was a pause. “Did you say….?”

“Yes. Black out my visor.”

“Princess, I really must protest. Leifor’s Dive is a highly advanced maneuver. Your father waited years before he allowed his paladins to attempt it.”

“I understand that, Coran, but we’re running short on time. Darken my visor.”

Coran still hesitated, and Allura could sense his unasked questions in the silence of the comms. Anger flashed in her bones, but it cooled quickly as the Black Lion rumbled her displeasure. Of all the lions, only Yellow had a slower temper than Black. They were not like the Red Lion, who existed always on the edge of fury, ready to attack at any moment.

The Black Lion was the head of Voltron. Her paladin was meant to be the voice of reason. Allura liked to think of herself as a rational person, cool under pressure and always on top of the situation. Maybe she had been, once, before the war broke out. But those final weeks before her father put her in cryostasis had been frantic, frightful days, full of snap judgments and high tensions.

Ten thousand years had passed, but Allura was still living in a state of emergency.

She sighed, searching for the right words. “The Black Lion may have accepted me as her pilot, but I’m not her paladin. Not yet. For all my shouting today, it’s not the humans who need to try harder to form Voltron. _I’m_ the reason this isn’t working.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself. You’ve only been bonded to your lion for two days. There are bound to be a few hiccups in the--”

“You don’t understand.” Allura didn’t care that she was being rude. She’d tried to hold this in the last two days, but it was eating her from the inside. If she didn’t tell someone the truth, she was going to end up—well. She was going to end up hurting someone, just as she’d done earlier today. “You were right, Coran.”

Up to this point, Coran’s video feed had been tucked away, almost unseen in the corner of the Black Lion’s display. He’d been busy with something inside the castle, listening to Allura but not wholly focused on her. Now he stopped and stared at her. Allura eased her lion to a stop in midair and enlarged Coran’s feed.

“I’m sorry,” Coran said, shaking his head. “What?”

“You were right. You were right to worry about me piloting the Black Lion. I’m not ready for this. I thought I was, but-- Every time she reaches out to me, all I hear is _him._ ”

Coran’s face softened. He looked at her, not as an adviser to the princess, but as her friend. As her _family_. She’d called him Uncle Coran when she was a child, and times like this she wondered why she’d ever stopped.

“Zarkon isn’t a paladin any longer. The Black Lion cut herself off from him when he turned on us.”

“I know.” Allura’s grip on the controls tightened, then went slack. The lion nudged at the edge of her awareness, a question and an apology. She knew that Allura didn’t trust her. It wasn’t fair, but rather than resent it, the Black Lion waited at the end of their fragile bond, patient. Silent. Waiting.

 _Am I arrogant?_ she wondered. _One look at the humans and I’d convinced myself they needed me to lead them. What makes me think I deserve to be the black paladin?_

Allura shut down those thoughts where they stood. Perhaps it was arrogance. But she’d made the right call. Matt and Pidge, Hunk and Lance—they’d all been chosen by their lions. It was all in the past now, so Allura would just have to make herself into the paladin they all needed her to be.

“I need to do this, Coran. I need to learn to trust the Black Lion.” She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Darken my visor.”

This time the silence was one of resignation.

“All right.”

Allura urged the Black Lion forward, then put her into a dive. Coran keyed in the command for Leifor’s Dive, and Allura’s vision went dark. For a moment, she felt only panic, the instinctive need to know where she was, how far above the ground.

She let herself feel that fear for a moment, then let it go. _See through your lion’s eyes. Trust her, unite with her, and then you will know what it means to be a true paladin of Voltron._

Alfor’s voice resounded in Allura’s blood, words spoken to the paladins of old, words Allura had memorized for the day it fell to her to train a new generation of Paladins. She hadn’t expected that _she_ would be the one in need of training, but she knew what she had to do.

Clearing her mind, Allura flexed her fingers, loosening her death grip on the controls. She reached out for the bond she shared with Black—weak, incomplete, fragile. Her lion waited on the other end, thrumming with anticipation. _I’m here_ , she seemed to say. _I’m ready. You just need to take control._

Allura let her mind relax into the bond, stretching toward the nebulous awareness on the other end. Zarkon’s face rose in her mind, the cruel twist in his voice as he declared war on his friends and allies. Here was a man Allura had once called great, a leader, a calm and inspiring voice among the paladins. He had been Alfor’s closest friend, once upon a time. She still couldn’t fathom what had prompted him to turn his back on it all.

She pushed thoughts of Zarkon aside. He was no paladin, not any longer. He’d left that life behind, and he had no place in this cockpit now. It was just Allura and the Black Lion. Her lion. _Hers,_ not Zarkon’s.

 _I’m sorry,_ Allura said to the Black Lion. _Please, give me another chance._

Suddenly the world opened up around her. She saw not only the sky, but the winds, little eddies in the air like curls of heat. She felt them push her this way and that, and she swept her tail from side to side to counter their forces. She saw the Castle of Lions to her right, away beyond the mountains, heard the contentment of the other four lions slumbering in their bays.

She saw the ground, rushing up to meet her.

Allura pulled up. Her claws grazed the rock below, and then she was up, skimming just above the surface, weaving between boulders and trees and the ruins of cities that had risen and died in the last ten thousand years. Dimly, she heard Coran shouting in joy, and she smiled.

_Thank you, my friend._

The lion’s engines rumbled beneath her seat, a welcome and a celebration.

* * *

Sendak’s ship was farther out than Matt had anticipated, but the jetpacks built into their armors sped things up considerably. Even so, it took close to an hour to reach the wreckage, another ten minutes to find a way inside.

By some miracle, the main computer was still intact. It had even landed right side up, though they had to climb over a considerable amount of rubble to reach it.

Their luck ended there.

“The engines are dead,” Pidge said, running their hand over the console. “Hell, there probably isn’t an engine _left_ after the beating this thing took.”

“Language,” Matt chided absentmindedly as he scanned the space. This must have been the bridge, though it was difficult to be sure. Aside from the hull, a section of deck, a few partial walls, and the computer itself, everything was gone. Sand had already begun to creep in through the holes in the ship, collecting in the corners and against the computer’s base.

Pidge rolled their eyes and continued. “Without a power source, I can’t access the system. I mean, I could try to find this thing’s internal memory, but I don’t know enough about Galra computers to risk it.”

“What sort of power supply are we talking about?”

“I don’t know. Do aliens even have electricity?”

Matt had never thought to ask that. He smiled. “We could ask Allura.”

“You think?”

Shrugging, Matt leaned back against the console. “It’s worth a shot.”

Pidge seemed reluctant to agree, but there was no alternative. They lingered inside the ship for a few moments, Pidge popping off the front panel of the main computer bank to get a look inside. Matt was an engineer, not a programmer; he dealt more with pistons and hydraulics than circuit boards, so he wasn’t surprised that he didn’t recognize any of it, but Pidge looked equally baffled.

After a moment, they backed away and reluctantly followed Matt back outside. He sighed at the thought of walking all the way back to the castle so soon after they’d made the trek out here. There was nothing to be done about that, though. Best to suck it up and start walking.

A shadow passed overhead, and Matt looked up. He’d expected one of the lions, out on a training exercise, or maybe just looking for Matt and Pidge.

His mouth was open for a greeting before he realized—that wasn’t a lion.

“Pidge!” he shouted. “Get down!”

He didn’t give them time to react; with a burst of speed from his jet pack, Matt tackled Pidge to the ground. The ship, or whatever it was, skimmed overhead, close enough that the wind of its passing threatened to lift Matt off the ground. He hunched his shoulders and clawed at the ground.

The thing landed on the bow of Sendak’s ship, a few hundred feet from the bridge where Matt and Pidge lay. The impact kicked up a cloud of dust and rocks that pelted Matt’s back. He hunched over Pidge, shielding them as best he could, and waited for one of the larger rocks to end him.

Before that could happen, something moved between him and the impact. A hulking shape that flashed in the sun and a familiar presence in his mind. _Red?_ It was. And on his other side, Green.

Pidge peeked out from beneath Matt, mouth open in wonder. “Did they just...save us?”

“I think they did.”

He didn’t have long to think about it. From the bow of the warship came the sound of creaking metal and a series of thuds, as though something heavy had fallen a great distance. Matt raised himself into a crouch and peered over the Red Lion’s leg at the giant... _thing_ emerging from the impact crater.

It was a monster unlike anything Matt had ever seen, organic parts spliced onto a robotic skeleton, the whole thing standing taller than the wreckage of the warship.

It stood on six legs, long and sinuous like a centipede, the front third of its body upright and almost humanoid in appearance. Another two limbs grew from this torso, short, spindly things that ended in wicked-looking guns. Six eyes looked out from its flat, diamond-shaped head, and a streak of garish yellow paint cut through the two leftmost eyes like a scar.

The strength left Matt's legs and he collapsed against Red, staring in horror at the monster watching him with empty eyes. Familiar eyes.

“Simsill.”


	6. Weapons of the Galra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Allura tried to get the team in sync through a series of team-building exercises, but her plan backfired when the stress of the exercises pushed her paladins to the edge. Matt and Pidge went to examine Sendak's downed warship, but were unable to extract any information about their father or Shiro because of damage to the ship's power supply. Their expedition was cut short when a robeast resembling Matt's old friend Simsill landed in the desert near them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for minor character death in this chapter (the actual death occurs off screen).

Shiro’s opponent collapsed, sword spinning away across the pitted floor of the Arena. For a moment, Shiro held himself ready for one final, desperate attack. He knew too well how far a gladiator could push their body when they had nothing more to lose.

His opponent tried once to stand and then collapsed – battered, exhausted, but alive.

Shiro lowered his sword, his arms shaking. His lungs burned as he gasped for air in the dusty, sweltering enclosure. All around him the sounds of spectators swelled, bursting fresh against his ears as the high of battle fell away. There was cheering and hooting and a thunder of boots against chairs and floors and railings.

The only thing the Galra liked more than seeing a prisoner rise to challenge the Champion was watching the Champion initiate new gladiators.

There had been six today. Six new prisoners, all young enough and fit enough to fight, some only just. Two, including the last, had some degree of combat training. Enough to last more than sixty seconds against Shiro. The rest?

The rest were even harder to face. Young, scared faces; none of them human, but all staring at him with wide eyes that reminded him of Matt. It had been six months since since Shiro had last seen Matt Holt, six months since he became Champion. Six months of fighting, sometimes killing, his fellow prisoners.

There was a certain etiquette to the Arena. Everyone faced the Champion when they first arrived, but after that you had to fight your way to the top. You had to earn the right to challenge the Champion. Only two sorts of gladiators made it that far: those who wanted to take his place and those who wanted an end to the nightmare.

Shiro killed them all. He had no choice. When someone challenged the Champion, the match didn’t end until one of the gladiators was dead. The best Shiro could do was make their end as painless as possible.

One thing kept him sane. One fact grounded him, held him back when he wanted to let a challenger finally, _finally_ bring him down.

Shiro had never killed a new arrival.

He’d heard stories of the other Champions. Certainly he’d heard the rumors about Myzax, the Champion he’d replaced. How he prided himself on killing nine out of every ten gladiators in their first match. “Thinning the herd,” he’d called it. Making sure only the strongest joined the ranks of the gladiators. Champions were not known for their mercy.

Shiro was different. Champion of Zarkon in name, but Champion of the prisoners in truth. The Galra weren’t exactly pleased, but as long as he put on a good show, as long as he finished his opponents in official challenges, they let him do what he wanted. The prisoners who were too badly injured to continue to fight were sent to work camps and mining colonies. Not exactly freedom, but at least they weren’t forced to fight each other on a daily basis.

Shiro watched in silence, struggling to control his ragged breathing, as guards came and carried away the final prisoner of the day. This one was a species Shiro didn’t recognize, something vaguely insectoid whose wounds oozed a thin yellow liquid. Shiro couldn’t say how well they would heal, but they had defended themself well. Three of the newcomers would be sent away, but the last probably wasn’t one of them.

When the guards disappeared through the far door with the prisoner in tow, Shiro drove the tip of his sword into the ground. He turned and started toward the door behind him. Toward fitful sleep and what passed for luxury in the world of a Galra prison. Food that tasted more like tasteless slop than rotten garbage. A private cell, though no less frigid or claustrophobic. The life of the Champion.

A hush fell over the crowd.

Shiro’s steps slowed, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. _Another fight?_ He spun, dropping low. Challenges weren’t allowed on initiation day; Zarkon liked his Champion to be in top form when he fought a challenger. But there were no other newcomers left to fight; Shiro was certain of it.

It wasn’t a prisoner.

A Galra soldier stood in the center of the arena, his hand on Shiro’s discarded sword.

No. Not just a solider. Red lines marked the breastplate of his armor. This was an _officer_. Shiro’s breath faltered. Part of him wanted to kneel, before the Galra officer had him executed for looking at him the wrong way.

Another, larger part of Shiro wanted to grab his sword and separate the Galra’s head from his shoulders.

Shiro restrained himself on both counts. Killing a Galra—any Galra, but especially an officer—would only end with Shiro dead, too. But he wouldn’t kneel to a Galra, not as long as he had strength left to stand.

At first, the Galra ignored Shiro, running his clawlike fingers down the hilt of the sword. He grasped the sword and pulled it free, then tossed it at Shiro’s feet.

Shiro didn’t take his eyes off the Galra.

“Take it,” the Galra said. Shiro watched for signs of a trick. He’d never been allowed a weapon outside the Arena, or anywhere he might use it against his captors. So why now?

Around him, the watching Galra whispered among themselves. Shiro studied those he could see beyond the officer. They seemed as surprised as Shiro was at this turn of events. It hadn’t been planned—or at least, the plan hadn’t been widely known.

The Galra officer smiled, fangs flashing white in the harsh lights of the Arena. He reached behind his back and drew a dagger the length of his forearm. Not a typical weapon for a Galra. Most soldiers wielded blasters. A few officers had mechanical augmentations or used modified swords or spears. Then again, this Galra didn’t look like he would have been able to lift weapons like those. He was shorter than Shiro by several inches, and scrawny. Shiro had never seen a less imposing figure among the Galra ranks.

The Galra officer twirled his knife, then held it low at his side. “Prepare yourself, _Champion_.”

Shiro hesitated only a moment longer. If a Galra wanted to fight him, then who was Shiro to argue? He slid his foot under the hooked blade of his sword and kicked it up into the air, grabbing the hilt as it came within reach.

Something glimmered in the Galra’s empty yellow eyes. Satisfaction, perhaps, or anticipation. He didn’t wait for Shiro to get into a ready stance before he charged. Shiro raised his sword just in time to block the knife aimed at his throat. The force of the strike made him stagger, and he retreated quickly as the Galra pressed his advantage.

Sometimes, late at night, his muscles sore from fighting in the Arena, his hands burning with spilled blood, Shiro had planned an escape. Or he’d planned something. Going down, but taking as many Galra with him as possible. He’d choreographed those fights in his head, over and over, drawing on what little he’d seen of Galra soldiers in action.

He’d never pictured something like this. The Galra officer fought at close quarters. He knew how to throw his weight into an attack, but in a straight contest of strength Shiro thought he could win, even fatigued and malnourished as he was.

But this Galra was _fast_ , and he was agile. None of Shiro’s attacks landed, and his opponent kept managing to get around behind him to strike at his back. Soon Shiro’s upper body was littered with shallow wounds.

The strangest part was the deathly silence in the Arena. Galra were not quiet spectators. Every match Shiro had fought in or witnessed was met with a thunder of shouts and jeers. He’d learned early on to let it fade to the edge of his awareness. The white noise of battle.

Now, faced with stillness so complete he could hear the scrape of the Galra officer’s boots against the dirty floor, Shiro felt off balance. Who _was_ this Galra? Obviously he was well known, enough to hold the crowd in thrall.

So why the _hell_ did he want to fight a prisoner?

 _Add that to the list of answers I’ll never get,_ Shiro told himself, finding his balance and watching the Galra circle, dagger held in a reverse grip so the blade ran back along his forearm. He suddenly changed direction and charged Shiro, who dodged to one side. The Galra spun on the ball of his foot and came at Shiro again. Shiro’s reflexes weren’t as fast this time, and the dagger caught the front of his shirt as the Galra passed.

Shiro stumbled back, off-balance. The Galra came back for a third pass, and Shiro had to throw himself into a roll to escape. The Galra was already on top of him when he came up, his left hand reaching down. He dragged it through a patch of dirt and flung it at Shiro’s eyes.

Swearing, Shiro turned his face away from the dust cloud and blinked furiously. A foot connected with his side, lifting him off the ground. He landed hard and rolled, rubbing furiously at his eyes. Even before he could see, he forced himself to move. He knew the Arena by heart; he’d fought here often enough. Many of the gladiators who earned the right to challenge him belonged to large, strong, vicious species. Shiro had learned the cover he could use to his advantage, and he sought it out now, tears streaming from his eyes.

Deep breaths.

Shiro closed his eyes, stopped straining for sight and instead listened. In the silence, he heard his own breathing. A whisper from somewhere in the crowd: _Whatever happened to his pride?_ Shiro didn’t know if that was meant for him, or for the Galra who sought a fight with a human prisoner.

A footstep.

The Galra was light on his feet. In an ordinary fight, he would have vanished into the rumble of the crowd. But not now. Not in an arena holding its collective breath.

Shiro opened his eyes and threw himself out from behind the pillar where he’d taken refuge. The Galra officer, halfway around the pillar in his own attack, faltered. Yellow eyes widened. Shiro planted his feet and dropped his shoulder and _lunged_.

The Galra’s breath left his lungs in a wheeze, ghosting against Shiro’s ear as his momentum carried them both to the ground. Shiro landed on top of his opponent, pinning him, pressing his sword against the Galra’s neck.

He was so young.

Shiro had thought at first the officer was just short and slight, but up close like this… It was hard to tell the age of aliens, but Shiro had seen more Galra than most, and he was certain the officer was younger than Shiro himself. If not for the insignia on his uniform, Shiro would have guessed he was a new recruit, hardly more than a boy.

Shock loosened Shiro’s grip on the Galra. Snarling, the Galra flipped the dagger around in his hand and swung. A line of fire burned across Shiro’s face, hot blood seeping down his cheeks and nose. He jerked back, but remembered himself an instant later and grabbed the hand holding the dagger. Shiro was bigger than the Galra and had better leverage, and it was pitifully easy to pin his hand above his head.

Shiro stayed like that for several seconds, his sword biting into the Galra’s neck.

The boy swallowed, and a line of violet blood welled up beneath the blade.

Abruptly, Shiro became aware of the whispers sweeping through the Arena like wind. He’d forgotten the audience—several hundred Galra who’d just seen him defeat one of their own. Several hundred _angry_ Galra watching a prisoner hold a blade to a Galra officer’s throat.

Shiro scrambled back, dropping his sword, heart pounding. _Idiot._ He should have thrown the fight. Maybe his opponent would have killed him, but that was likely going to happen now, anyway. He tasted blood—his own blood, flowing from the gash across his face. God, what had he been _thinking_?

The Galra climbed to his feet, gingerly touching the thin, bloody line across his throat. He snatched the dagger up off the ground and returned it to the sheath at the small of his back.

Then he smiled at Shiro.

“I’m impressed,” he said.

Shiro swallowed, his mouth dry, his mind blank. He had to fix this, had to apologize, had to do something. The crowd around them was on its feet, loud enough now to make up for their earlier silence. The shouts rang loud in Shiro’s ears, harsh, sharp calls, insults and jeers—so loud he almost missed the Galra officer’s next words.

“You should fight for us.”

He might as well have dumped ice water over Shiro. “What did you say?”

“You should fight for us—join the army. Your talent is wasted in the Arena.”

Shiro couldn’t help himself. His lip curled back and he spat a mixture of spit and blood on the ground between them. “I’d rather die.”

The Galra’s lips pressed together as guards appeared on either side of Shiro, grabbing him and hauling him backward toward the door. Shiro let himself be dragged. He was too tired and sore to fight anymore. If they killed him, so be it.

The Galra officer remained standing in the center of the Arena, yellow eyes tracking Shiro until the Arena door closed between them.

* * *

“Who’s Simsill?” Pidge asked, hesitant.

Matt swallowed. “A prisoner of the Galra,” he said. “We were friends.”

“With _that_  thing?”

What could he say? That Simsill had been smaller, frailer, kinder when Matt had known him? That the Galra had done something horrible, something Matt hadn’t even known was possible? The monster slowly getting its bearings on the desert floor was clearly a threat; every inch of it bristled with weapons. Was it only built to look like Simsill? Was Simsill dead, or somehow still alive inside that thing?

_What did they do to you?_

The cannons mounted on the beast’s arms began to glow from within. It didn’t seem to have noticed Matt and Pidge yet, but that wouldn’t last much longer.

“Get into your lion,” Matt said.

Pidge turned toward them. “I thought you said you were friends.”

“We were.” Matt shoved Pidge toward the Green Lion’s open mouth. “But I don’t know how much of Simsill is left inside that thing.”

With one last glance at the beast, which had climbed on top of Sendak’s ship, Matt sprinted inside the Red Lion and settled himself at the controls. Red crouched, preparing herself to take off, but even that slight motion caught the beast’s attention. Twin laser beams flashed out across the desert toward the lions, and Matt and Pidge split off in opposite directions.

“We have to lead it away from the ship,” Pidge said. “If those computers are destroyed, we’ll never find out what Sendak knew about Dad.”

Matt grimaced. “I’m with you, Pidge, but right now we need to worry about staying alive.”

The disgruntled noise Pidge made told Matt exactly what they thought of that idea. It shouldn’t have surprised him, he supposed. This was the kid who at thirteen had chopped off all their hair, taken a new name, and joined the Garrison all for a shot at finding out where their family had gone—and then had flown off into deep space and joined an intergalactic war without a second thought.

Matt sighed. “Don’t do anything reckless, Pidge.”

“Me? Never.”

Matt and Pidge took off in opposite directions, circling around behind the beast and sprinting out into open desert. Laser blasts shook the ground beneath their feet and screamed overhead, keeping both lions grounded.

This wasn’t good. The lions were agile on the ground, but slower than when they were airborne. Down on the surface, there were only so many ways to avoid an attack; at this rate it wouldn’t be long before the beast got in a lucky shot.

Running wasn’t doing them much good, and Red was itching to go on the offensive. Matt pulled back on the controls, turning his lion around. She skidded backwards on all four paws as Matt opened fire with his tail laser.

The hit took the beast straight in the chest, but it barely staggered. When the beam dissipated, Matt saw that it hadn’t even left a mark on the beast’s armor.

And now it was striking back. Matt panicked, twisting the controls to get Red to move again, to get out of the path of that thing’s canons, but he already knew he was going to be too slow. The canons glowed white-violet as they powered up.

A black streak fell from the sky, lasers lancing out toward the beast. Caught by surprise, it stumbled and turned toward the new threat, taking its eyes off Matt and Pidge for a single moment. But it was enough. Matt launched the Red Lion into the sky, Green following just behind.

The Black Lion landed on the beast’s head and kicked off, skimming over the desert as Allura raised Matt and Pidge on the comms.

“Are you two all right?” she asked.

“Thanks to you.” Matt gave her a shaky smile. “Nice timing, by the way.”

Allura laughed. “I was out here training. Fortunately for you, it would seem. What is this thing?”

Matt studied the beast as he circled it at a distance. The sinuous, centipede-like body was mostly mechanical, but there were definitely organic components interspersed with the rest. “Some kind of Galra experiment, I think. It looks like a prisoner I knew named Simsill.”

Allura hummed to herself. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Be careful.”

“No kidding,” Pidge said. “What I want to know is where it came from, and how it found us.”

“Maybe Sendak called for reinforcements before we took him out?” Matt suggested. “I don’t know. How do we beat it?”

“I’ve alerted Coran to the situation,” Allura said. “Lance and Hunk are on their way as we speak. For now, we keep our distance and try to figure out what exactly this creature is capable of.”

Right. Matt pursed his lips as he shot the beast in the back to draw its attention. Provoke the thing and try not to get killed. Wonderful.

* * *

Three uneventful days followed Shiro’s duel with the Galra officer. There were no challengers to face in the Arena, no guards coming to drag him off to be executed, no special torture or interrogation. Life just went on the way it had for the last six months.

On the fourth day, the Galra officer turned up in Shiro’s cell, locked himself in with Shiro, and ordered the guards away. He leaned back against the door and eyed Shiro, who forced himself to remain seated on his bunk despite every nerve screaming that this was a threat and that he had to defend himself. One move against the officer, and he was dead for sure. Better to wait and see what he wanted.

As Champion, Shiro was granted a private cell with a bunk—thin and hard, but cleaner and dryer than the floor where the other prisoners slept. Sitting on the edge of his bunk, Shiro was only a few feet from the Galra officer.

“You fought well the other day.”

Shiro studied the Galra’s face, looking for signs of bitterness or anger, but the officer’s face remained impassive.

Shiro remained silent.

The officer tipped his head to one side, as though surprised by this. Then he continued. “You must be an accomplished warrior among your people.”

“Why are you here?” Shiro asked. There had been a time where he wouldn’t have dared to interrupt a Galra, especially not with that tone of exasperation. But it had been six months since he’d been captured. Six months of fighting for his life and trying to hold on to his soul.

He was done giving the Galra control over him.

The Galra studied him in silence, and despite himself Shiro felt a spike of fear.

Eventually, the officer shrugged and crossed his arm. “I came to offer you a place in the Galra army.”

“I already gave you my answer.” Shiro’s mouth had gone dry, and getting the words out took more effort than it should have. He’d been expecting punishment, even execution, not this. Could it be a trap? If it was, it was a strange one. They had to know he’d be suspicious. But if it the offer was genuine… Shiro couldn’t fathom why they would offer him something like that.

The Galra officer was scowling now, and even that wasn’t what Shiro would have expected. It was more furrowed brow than bared teeth—not the anger that preceded a beating, but a grimace of confusion.

“Your talent is wasted here. Why keep rotting away in a cell when you could be free?”

Shiro sat up a little straighter, anger coursing through him, and locked eyes with the officer, who stiffened and looked away. “What you’re offering isn’t freedom.”

Bristling, the Galra officer stepped forward until he was almost standing on Shiro’s feet. He wasn’t tall enough to really _loom_ , but with his ears flat against his skull and his lip pulled back, baring two small fangs, he was intimidating enough to render Shiro speechless.

“You’ll die here without me.”

Shiro swallowed and squared his shoulders. “Better to die than to become a monster like you.”

* * *

Lance opened fire on the monster the second it came into range. The thing was massive; not as massive as the warship on the ground behind it, but still several times larger than the lions. It also screamed _Galra_ , between the slimy, rotten-looking fleshy bits and the overabundance of laser guns added onto every appendage. (Even Lance had to admit it was overkill, and Lance would have given up an eye if it meant replacing it with one that shot lasers.)

“Be careful!” Matt’s voice was sharp and not nearly as congratulatory as Lance thought it should be. Sure, his lasers hadn’t really done much damage, but his aim had been pretty great. Didn’t that count for something?

“I’m fine, Matt, jeez. It’s not even shooting back.” It figured that the monster would open fire right as he said that. Lance squawked a protest and veered out of the line of fire.

Matt sighed. “I wasn’t talking about that. I meant, don’t just start shooting at something when you don’t know what it is.”

Lance frowned at the video feed in the corner of the display—though, come to think of it, the camera was probably centered _above_ the display, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was somewhere on the console. Either way… “I know enough. It’s big, it’s Galra, and it tried to kill you. Or did I mishear the call for backup?”

“No, I--” Matt grunted. “It’s complicated.”

Allura stepped in, since it seemed Matt was having difficulty explaining himself. “It seems this creature was designed to look like Matt’s friend, a fellow prisoner named Simsill.” She pressed her lips together as she dove under the monster’s arm. For all the laser gun attachments, it seemed pretty content to bludgeon the lions to death instead of shooting them. Maybe it had really bad aim. “He doesn’t want to hurt it.”

The monster turned and opened fire on Hunk, who had been trying to sneak up behind it in the Yellow Lion. Hunk yelped and shot skyward, taking a couple glancing hits as he retreated.

Lance powered up his laser and took aim. “Yeah… Sorry, Matt. I don’t think that’s an option.” Before Matt could complain, Lance fired. His laser caught the monster in the eye—or, well, one of them. It shrieked, a horrible sound like tearing metal, and staggered back. Lance whooped. “Hey! Look who found it’s weak spot!” He fired again, right into another eye, and the thing screamed again.

“Stop!” Matt yelled, his voice ragged enough to cut Lance’s celebration short. He checked Red’s video feed. Matt had let go of his controls altogether and gripped his hair in two fists. “You’re hurting him!”

Motion from outside the cockpit stole Lance’s attention away from Matt and Allura, who was trying to talk sense into him. The monster was turning, dancing on its six legs. Two of its eyes were smoking now, but it didn’t seem very put out by that. It raised both arms, pointing towards--

 _Aw, quiznak,_ Lance thought, catching sight of the Red Lion, which was drifting aimlessly at the back of the group. “Matt, watch--”

The monster fired. Matt jerked in his seat, eyes going wide. He reached for the controls, but there was no way he was going to have time to get out of there. Lance punched the accelerator—but Pidge was faster. The Green Lion dove between Red and the monster’s lasers, rolling onto its side so that the shield on its back took the brunt of the impact.

Still, the arm cannon packed a punch. The Green Lion slammed into the Red Lion, and both crashed to the ground, leaving a cloud of sand and dust in their wake.

“Lance!” Allura snapped as Lance turned to go after them. “We have to keep this beast away from them.”

“R-right.” Lance tore his eyes away from the fallen lions and shot toward the monster, twirling out of the way of another laser blast and skimming close enough to the head that Blue’s steel claws dragged along its head. “You guys all right?” he asked, keeping his eyes _up_ and _not on the video feeds_ , even though his gut was screaming at him to _make sure they aren’t dead_!

“Fine,” Pidge grunted. They sounded a little banged up, but not too badly hurt, so that was something. “Matt?”

There was a moment’s pause, during which Lance’s eyes drifted toward the Red Lion’s video feed and he almost crashed Blue into a cliff. Then Matt released a shaky breath. “I’m fine. I just—that-that thing. Whatever it is, it--”

God, he sounded rough. Lance brought Blue down low to the ground and skimmed just above the surface through the narrow gap between the ground and the monster’s long belly. He tried a laser blast to the thing’s underside, but it didn’t seem to do much more than anything else.

“That scream,” Matt said, airborne once more but still a little shaky over the comms. “It sounded just like Simsill.”

“Your friend?” Hunk asked. “You think it’s--”

“It’s just a trick,” Allura said firmly. “Matt, they’re just trying to get to you. They built this thing to look like someone you knew, they recorded your friend screaming so it would _sound_ like him, too. But it was made. This beast isn’t your friend, Matt, and we have to stop it, before it destroys us or the Castle of Lions.”

Matt’s breath shook, but he nodded. “I know. Let’s go.”

* * *

After their first conversation in Shiro’s cell, the Galra officer made a habit of returning. The first few times, he repeated his offer, but Shiro kept refusing, and eventually the offer stopped coming. Questions followed—questions about Earth, about the Garrison, about Shiro and his family.

Shiro said nothing at all.

The Galra was also there for Shiro’s matches in the Arena, a silent, eerily still figure in the front row, dwarfed by the spectators around him. Shiro did his best to ignore him, but he never quite managed to forget the eyes trained on the back of his head.

It became a routine. A feral match in the Arena, fitful sleep in his cell, stony silence for an hour as the Galra officer rattled off a list of questions—always new, and increasingly inconsequential—then more fitful sleep, what little exercise he could manage in his cell, and back to the Arena. For nearly three months, nothing changed.

Then Shiro lost his arm and the witch called Haggar attached a mechanical prosthetic.

Shiro had vague, hazy memories of the officer shouting at Shiro, or maybe at Haggar. Shiro was fairly certain he’d been in shock at the time, and the trauma of Haggar attaching his new arm hadn’t made him any more lucid.

When Shiro’s mind cleared, he found himself back in his cell. The officer came as usual, but this time there were no questions. Just a troubled-looking Galra leaning against the door of his cell, staring at him for twenty minutes before he finally spoke.

“My name’s Keith.”

Shiro never figured out what it was that changed the tone of their conversations. The loss of Shiro’s arm? The fact that Haggar had made a new one special for him? Maybe it had nothing at all to do with Shiro, but the change was clear. Instead of asking questions, Keith spent most of his time quietly watching Shiro, like he was searching for something.

When they talked, it was about nothing of consequence. The Arena, the prisoners, the menial tasks the Galra soldiers had to perform to keep the ship running. Both Shiro and Keith were careful about what they said—but they were talking, and it felt like a conversation. Keith’s visits might have been the only conversations Shiro had had since his first day in the Arena, almost nine months ago.

Maybe it was the way Sendak kept the Champion isolated from the other prisoners. Maybe Shiro was just starved for companionship. Maybe it was all part of Keith’s plan to get Shiro talking; he couldn’t be sure. But he found himself looking forward to Keith’s visits.

He was given two weeks to recover from his injuries. Two weeks without a match in the Arena.

Then one day Keith arrived, buzzing with nervous energy and snappish with the guards when they took too long to step outside. Shiro tensed, anticipating the worst. A death sentence, an end to these cordial visits.

Instead, Keith grabbed the front of Shiro’s shirt and hauled him to his feet, leaning in to whisper in his ear.

“You need to let me help you.”

There was an urgency to the words that set Shiro’s heart racing, even as he tried to figure out where this was coming from. “Help…? What are you talking about? What happened?”

“Haggar happened,” Keith hissed. “She put something in your arm—she says she can control you. You need to join the army, _now_. I’ll--”

Shiro broke away from Keith, his hand groping for a sword that wasn’t there. “This again? I already told you, I’m not joining your army.”

“Listen, Champion--”

“No!” Shiro hated that Keith’s betrayal hurt. Stupid of him, to have let himself get used to the visits, to start to think of Keith as a friend, if not an ally. Of course it had all been a trick. He should have seen it coming.

Keith scowled, a growl building in the back of his throat. “Idiot. I don’t have time to argue with you. They’re going to be here any minute, and then--”

The hall door opened, cutting off Keith’s rant. He shot Shiro a frantic look, almost pleading. Shiro was taken aback, and by the time he recovered, it was too late to say or do anything. A pair of guards appeared at the cell door. They nodded to Keith, who glanced once more at Shiro before retreating.

“What’s happening?” Shiro asked, drawing a chuckle from one of the guards. Right. Prisoners didn’t get to ask questions of the Galra. They weren’t all as generous as Keith.

It didn’t matter anyway. It was obvious almost immediately what was happening. The guards escorted Shiro down to the vestibule just outside the Arena. It seemed his reprieve was over. The scarred tissue where the prosthetic arm was attached still ached, though Haggar had administered some kind of healing agent to speed his recovery. It still felt like his arm existed apart from the rest of him, but he supposed today was the day he learned to stop thinking that way.

He waited for the guards to hand him his sword, but it didn’t come. A few minutes after arriving in the vestibule, the door opened to the glaring lights and deafening roar of the Arena, and still Shiro was empty-handed.

The guards shoved him toward the door.

“Wait,” he said, stumbling. “My sword.”

“You don’t need a sword now, Champion.”

Shiro didn’t get a chance to ask what that meant—not that he would have received an answer in any case. The guard shoved again, sending Shiro out onto the sandy floor of the Arena. He straightened, searching for his opponent. He’d lost track of days, between the fog of his injury and the reprieve from the Arena. Was today the day they brought in the new prisoners, or had somebody issued a challenge?

The other prisoner stumbled in through the far door and fell to his knees. A Galra tossed a sword in after him, slamming the door shut as the prisoner tried to run back into the Vestibule.

The prisoner was a Nyxt, a humanoid race Shiro had seen several times before in the Arena. His skin was a dark green, and he had two small horns rising from the back of his head.

Aside from that, he could have been Matt Holt. Short, scrawny, and terrified, he pounded several times on the Arena door before finally diving for the sword on the floor beside him. He barely managed to lift it, and it shook as he pointed it at Shiro, who had yet to move from the far side of the Arena.

Maybe it was for the best that he hadn’t been given a weapon. He hated fighting the new prisoners, especially the ones who reminded him of Matt. But he had no choice. If Shiro refused to fight, they would both die, and someone else would become Champion. Someone who, in all likelihood, wouldn’t be nearly as merciful as Shiro.

He didn’t wait for the young Nyxt to make the first move but charged in, putting on the mask of the Champion, a cold, ruthless mask that made the Galra love him and the prisoners fear him. It was worth it, though, to spare their lives. Wasn’t it worth it?

Halfway across the Arena, Shiro’s arm began to burn. He slowed, breath hissing through his teeth, and squeezed the seam between flesh and metal in his other hand. The metal glowed an unnatural white-violet, like the dim lights that illuminated the prisoners’ cells. Shiro had always thought it was a cold light, but this was blazing hot, like holding a coal in his hand. Spears of agony lanced up his arm and into his chest. He hunched over, cradling his prosthetic arm against his stomach.

The pain crested, and the world around Shiro seemed to fade. It was spinning, or Shiro was, the noise of the Arena pulling back. Shiro felt like his head had been packed full of flour. He shook it, but that didn’t help, and everything was still fading.

* * *

The roar of the crowd shocked him back to his senses. No time seemed to have passed, but his legs burned like he’d just run a mile, and his breath rattled in his chest as he drew in great heaving gasps. The light and the pain had gone from his mechanical arm, but it was covered in something hot and sticky, a dark liquid that looked like--

Blood.

Shiro’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at his hand. Then his eyes drifted to the sandy, bloody ground around him, and the body lying crumpled just beside him.

It was the Nyxt, still holding his sword, now staring at Shiro with unseeing eyes.

* * *

“Take out its eyes!” Lance called over the comms, already firing his own laser. Matt hesitated only a moment before following suit. _That’s not Simsill_ , he reminded himself. Even if its scream, when Lance took out another eye, sounded exactly the same as Simsill’s scream when he took an energy blade meant for Matt.

 _You shouldn’t have done that,_ Matt had said, cleaning the puckered, blistering wound with the scant amount of water they were allotted. The blade had bit deep into Simsill's back and burned much of the flesh around the wound. _It was my own fault._

Simsill had only laughed that rasping, clicking laugh and rested a clawlike arm on Matt’s shoulder. _We have to look out for each other in here. Sulaasa knows no one else will._

Matt shook his head, forcing himself to focus as the beast screamed again. Pidge had just taken out another eye, leaving only two—the two painted with the yellow line that matched Simsill’s scar. Bracing himself, Matt shot forward and fired a half dozen shots from Red’s tail cannon as he flew past the beast’s head. One caught the first eye dead center; two more took care of the last one.

The beast screamed, as much rage as pain, and opened fire with every cannon on its body—the two attached to its arms, one on its short, hooked tail, and another, larger one inside it’s mouth.

“Paladins, scatter!” Allura cried, and the five of them split off, Hunk and Allura dropping down into a canyon below, Pidge and Lance rising skyward.

Matt didn’t break away. Instead, leaning over Red’s controls, he pressed forward, weaving between lasers and closing the distance to the monster that looked like Simsill. He wanted this thing dead. He wanted to go back to the prison where they’d both been held and save the real Simsill.

He wanted to find Zarkon and make him pay before he hurt anyone else Matt cared about.

Suddenly, he was through the lasers, too close to the beast to get hit, and the others were screaming his name. He ignored them, and let loose.

It wasn’t the laser on Red’s tail that fired, though. Instead, a wall of flame filled Matt’s display, and the beast _roared._

“What…?”

“Matt!”

As the flames faded, the Green Lion dropped down beside Red, firing at the beast’s chest, where Red’s flames had left a patch of molten metal. The laser didn’t cut cleanly through the armor, but it left a sizeable crater.

“I’m fine, Pidge,” Matt said quickly. “Everyone, hit this thing with everything you’ve got.”

A barrage of lasers zeroed in on the crater of molten metal and charred flesh. The armor absorbed the first few, but then then one got through, and another. The beast staggered, screamed, and then, finally, fell.

A cheer went up among the three younger humans, Allura simply breathing a sigh of relief and congratulating her team. Matt didn’t join in on the celebrations. He urged the Red Lion down toward the fallen beast’s head and climbed out. With a bit of focus, he managed to summon his bayard as a sword. Most of the armor was too thick to cut, but around the damaged eyes it was thinner. He started hacking away, knowing it was pointless but still somehow convinced he was going to find his friend inside.

A sea of wires and metal and a thin violet liquid—too watery to be either oil or blood—greeted each swipe of his sword, but he kept digging, waiting to find a chamber, or a cockpit, or...something.

He didn’t stop until Allura’s hand closed around his wrist. He tugged once, halfheartedly, knowing she was much too strong for him to break out of her grip, then looked up at her. The Black Lion sat on the ground beside Red, the other three hovering twenty or thirty feet away.

“Simsill may still be alive,” Allura said. “And if so, we’ll save him. I swear to you, we won’t stop until all of Zarkon’s prisoners have been freed.”

Silently, Matt dismissed his bayard. He thought of Simsill, screaming in pain. He thought of Shiro, taking Matt’s place in the Arena. He thought of his father, putting on a brave face as he was sent off to a mining colony somewhere impossibly far away.

“We’ll save them,” Matt agreed, laying his hand over Allura’s. “Someday.”

Allura smiled, believing Matt’s show of optimism, but inside he replayed another conversation, this one nearly a year old. His father had just been sent off, but he still had Shiro. It would be another week before they were sent to the Arena and separated.

They’d laid side by side in the frigid prison cell, huddled close for warmth and comfort and some semblance of companionship in this new hell they’d landed in.

 _Don’t worry, Matt,_ Shiro had said. _We’ll make it out of here. We’ll find your dad, and then all three of us will get home, someday._

Matt had laughed, his last, pitiful defense against tears he feared would never stop once he gave into them.

_Someday’s just another word for never._

* * *

_I killed him._

Shiro had no memory of returning to his cell, but that was where he found himself an eternity later, shaking, his head in his hands, the dead Nyxt swimming through his vision. The blood had dried on his prosthetic hand and now flaked off in his hair, rubbed against his forehead, smeared through the sweat. He could taste it, sharp and acidic.

_Champion._

He screwed his eyes shut, but the vision of the young Nyxt refused to disappear. The crowd still roared in Shiro’s ears.

The door opened, soft as a whisper. Shiro didn’t look up.

The lock engaged, footsteps retreated, someone joined him on the bunk. Shiro curled more tightly in on himself.

“I’m...sorry,” Keith said, rigid and awkward beside him. “I tried to stop it, but I...” He faltered, glanced toward Shiro, sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I killed him,” Shiro whispered. The words sounded worse spoken aloud, more broken. More real. His eyes burned and he pressed the heels of his hands against them to stop the tears. The metal still felt hot, liquid fire and blood. It was the Galra’s gift, which made it a curse.

Keith huffed, one foot tapping against the floor. " _Haggar_ killed him. She just used you as her weapon.”

A laugh tore itself from Shiro’s mouth. The bitter sound seemed to surprise Keith, whose foot went suddenly still as he looked at Shiro. “I guess this means you get your wish, doesn’t it? I’m going to join the Galra army now, whether I want to or not.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Keith nodded. “You still have a choice, though.”

“What choice? Do what Zarkon tells me to or turn into a puppet and do it all anyway?”

“No.” Keith drew his dagger and turned it over in his hand, running his claw-like fingers over the design etched in the blade. “Join as Haggar’s puppet...or join under my command.” He paused and looked at Shiro, meeting his eyes steadily. When he spoke again it was in a whisper, so low Shiro could barely make out the words. “Help me bring him down.”

On any other day, those words would have sounded surreal. A Galra, bringing Zarkon down, taking on a ten thousand-year-old empire? Not likely.

But Shiro didn’t have it in him to be skeptical at the moment. Maybe it was a trick, though considering Haggar could make him do whatever she wanted, a trick seemed unnecessary. So he just stared back at Keith and asked, “How are you going to pull that off?” He swallowed and looked down at his hands. “Look, even assuming I believe you, they’ll never agree to it.”

“They already have.”

Shiro looked up sharply. “What?”

Keith scratched his ear, looking guilty. “I, uh, already told Zarkon you wanted to join his army. Actually, I told him before I came here to warn you about Haggar. She has to be close to you to control you, you know. You’ll be more useful to Zarkon if he can send you wherever he needs you.”

For a long moment, Shiro stared at Keith, his mind a blank. There were a million reasons not to make a deal with the Galra, not to join their army, not to sell his soul, not to trust his captors.

But he didn’t have much of an option, not any more. Keith was right. If he didn’t take this offer, then Haggar would crush him under her thumb. He would be her weapon, and he would never see Earth or his family or the Holts again.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, surprising himself.

Keith thought for a moment, brow furrowed. His lips parted once. Twice. Then his shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “You’re different. You’re not like us—You’re...Zarkon would say you’re weak, but he’s wrong.” He offered Shiro a faint smile. “You have something the universe needs. I just don’t want to see Zarkon ruin it.”

Shiro studied him, searching for signs of deceit, but he knew the decision had already been made for him. However weak his trust in Keith, it was more than he would ever have in Haggar. With a deep breath and a silent apology to the Nyxt who’s name he’d never known, Shiro nodded.

“I’m in.”

* * *

Despite their victory, the humans were notably subdued as they all returned to the castle. Allura hesitated on the bridge as the others turned and headed for the door. Coran hovered at her side, his concern plain in the unnatural silence.

This was not what the paladins of Voltron were meant to be—awkward, distant, resentful—and much of that was Allura’s fault. She was the black paladin, the princess of Altea, the keeper of the lions. She had to make this right.

“Paladins.”

The four humans stopped at the door and turned. Hunk’s face was guarded, Lance’s openly hostile.

Allura held herself tall, clasping her hands at her waist. “I owe you all an apology.” Pidge and Hunk blinked in surprise, while Matt offered Allura a small smile.

“That’s not necessary, your Highness,” he said. “We understand.”

“Hey, speak for yourself.” Lance crossed his arms and fixed Allura with a nasty glare. “Today was a _nightmare_. And I’ve been through hell week at the Garrison.”

Allura bowed her head. “You’re right. I was so focused on the scope of our fight that I lost sight of the fact that you four are not soldiers, just four ordinary humans—brave and loyal humans, but also young and frightened and far from home. You have already given up so much to pilot the lions, and you deserved more patience than what I gave you. I pushed you all too hard, and I am truly sorry for that.”

“You’re worried,” Matt said. “We’ve fought the Galra twice now, and it hasn’t even been three days. At this rate, we’re going to need Voltron soon.”

Lance’s stony facade softened. He fought it for a moment, then sighed, sagging where he stood. “Ugh, _fine_. If Mat’s not sore about it, I guess _I_ can’t complain.”

Hunk nodded. “Yeah, no hard feelings.”

Allura looked at each of them in turn, the knot in her chest beginning to loosen.

“Actually...” Pidge glanced at Matt, smirking. “Matt had a pretty good idea about the whole team-building problem.”

“Oh?”

“How do you feel about trying some human team-building exercises?”

Allura broke into a wide smile. “I think that’s a splendid idea. What did you have in mind?”

“We call it a ‘slumber party.’”

The reaction from the other humans was instantaneous, and as baffling as it was amusing. Lance’s whole face lit up as he grabbed Pidge by the shoulders and shook them. "Pidge, you’re a genius!”

“Aw, _man_!” Hunk said, grinning. “I haven’t had a slumber party since I was, like, seven.”

Lance spun around, mouth dropping open. “ _What?_ That’s a tragedy!”

Even Matt was smiling as he bumped elbows with Pidge. “That sounds perfect. We’ll have to go all out, of course. Scary stories, truth or dare...”

“Twenty questions,” Pidge added, “junk food, movies, caffeine, a _blanket fort_!”

Lance waggled his eyebrows. “How about... _spin the bottle_?”

“No,” Matt deadpanned, at the same time Hunk groaned and Pidge elbowed Lance in the gut. Wheezing, he raised his hands in surrender.

“Just a suggestion.”

Allura looked at Coran, who was as lost as her. “All right. Just… let us know what you need, I suppose.”

“Gotcha.” Lance pointed at Hunk. “Hunk. Can you make imitation junk food from food goo?”

Hunk cracked his knuckles. “Hell, yeah, I can. Give me, like, two hours.”

“Perfect. Pidge. Location and _ambiance_.”

“Decorations. On it.”

“Allura and Coran—we need blankets. As many as you can find. Pillows, too. I’ll man the blanket fort, and Matt--”

“I’ll...meet you there,” he said, smiling apologetically. “I’ve got something to take care of first.”

Lance booed Matt out of the room, but evidently slumber parties required extensive preparations, and he was soon caught up in organizing. Allura watched Matt go in silence, hoping he was going to be all right.

* * *

By the time Matt got down to the pod room, the timer on the cryo-replenishers was almost up. He leaned against the console in the center of the room and waited, his nerves tingling with anticipation. He thought of Simsill, and the others he’d known in the prison he’d been shipped off to. He wished he could remember how he’d escaped—were the other prisoners all right? Had he tried to bring any of them with him?

Matt barely remembered these prisoners. He’d known them for a week, if that. Honestly, Matt wasn’t sure they’d all been in the Arena at the same time as him. But Pidge said they knew who Shiro was, and that was all Matt really needed to know.

One by one, the pod doors retracted and the prisoners emerged, groggy and disoriented. Matt steadied the ones who needed it and handed out blankets and steamed drinks—like tea, but thicker—from an alcove that opened up once the healing cycle completed itself. It wasn’t much, but it gave them something to hold as they sat and processed everything that had happened.

Matt understood that, too.

“I know you.”

Matt turned toward the speaker, the tall, slender alien with gray skin and four arms. This was not one of the aliens he had immediately recognized, but now that he looked at him, Matt thought they might have met after all.

“The Arena?” Matt guessed.

The alien nodded. “I was there that day. We all were.” He spread his lower hands to indicate the others. Matt glanced around, frowning.

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember you very well. I don’t remember much about that day at all, except how scared I was.”

“But you remember Champion? His bloodlust, his impatience? The way he attacked you?”

Matt recoiled, a chill shooting through him. “Attacked me? Shiro _saved_ me!”

“I saw your leg,” the gray-skinned alien said, his voice slow and mournful. “How long was it before you could walk again?”

Matt flinched, then balled his hands into fists. “He attacked me so I wouldn’t have to fight in the Arena. If I’d stayed, I would have died. Shiro did what he did to protect me.”

Doubt flashed in the alien’s eyes. A glance around the room showed similar expressions on all the former prisoners’ faces. Anger rose up inside Matt, threatening to choke him, but what could he do? These aliens didn’t know Matt. They wouldn’t believe him.

“Where is Shiro now?”

Whispers jumped from one prisoner to another, though each died when Matt turned to look for the source. Finally the gray-skinned alien broke the silence.

“He defected.”

Matt’s heart clenched. “What?”

“Champion—Shiro, as you call him. He reigned over the Arena for nine months, and then he joined the Galra army. He fights for Zarkon now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can thank Josh Keaton (Shiro's voice actor) for at least some of the pain in this chapter. Inspiration comes from his interview with the hosts of the "Let's Voltron" podcast. Listen to the clip on my blog: http://squirenonny.tumblr.com/post/150010395609/lady-vega-in-which-the-spectacular-josh-keaton


	7. Slumber Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Team Voltron defeated the attacking robeast, Matt heard that Shiro had joined Zarkon's army, and Allura agreed to try a human bonding exercise called a "slumber party."

Lance was stoked.

It had been for _ever_ since he’d felt so at home. Okay, sure, he’d only left Earth like two days ago, whatever. This felt more like home than the Garrison, anyway.

Hunk had spent two solid hours in the kitchen with the food goo and whatever else they’d been able to find in the fields outside the castle. What he’d come up with ran the full gamut from “Arusian tuber chips” (which tasted incredibly like potato chips), to green cookies that tasted like chocolate despite being mostly food goo, to something Lance decided to just go ahead and call cheese and crackers because he probably didn’t want to know what it _really_ was.

The only thing missing was popcorn, but Lance could forgive that omission on account of Hunk somehow producing three pitchers full of carbonated drinks that could have been some kind of artisan sodas. Green apple and vanilla and...Well, Lance could only describe the third one as _pure sugar_.

Aside from the table along the wall where Hunk had piled his feast, the rest of the lounge was taken up by Lance’s masterpiece. Allura and Coran had collected sheets, blankets, and pillows from all the spare bedrooms and, under Lance’s direction, the three of them had created a blanket fort to end all blanket forts. There were peaks and towers and tunnels and a big central chamber with a mound of pillows and spare blankets for bed-making.

(One advantage of being in an alien castle: floating platters, drones, and other doodads that made perfect supports.)

Pidge had whipped together the weirdest—but _awesomest—_ lighting Lance had ever seen. It was arranged in a string like Christmas lights, but that was where the ordinary ended. The lights Pidge had arranged around the ceiling of the central chamber twinkled like tiny crystal-clear stars that were clustered in constellations despite there not being that many bulbs on the string. Others glowed through the silk sheet walls as shifting, colored ambiance. It looked like a sunset, or maybe an aurora.

Now they were just waiting for Matt to finish up whatever excuse he’d cooked up to duck out of the heavy labor. Hunk had shuttled a few appetizers into the blanket fort and was introducing the Alteans to imitation Earth junk food. Lance waited outside the fort, pacing back and forth and checking the wall-mounted clock (sorry, _ticker_ ) every few seconds ( _ticks_ ).

Pidge was perched on the snack table, watching him in amusement. “Wasn’t the point of this to relax?” they asked.

Lance gave them a dirty look. “I’ll relax when everybody’s here. Did your brother tell _you_ where he was going?”

“Nope.” Pidge leaned back on their hands. “I think Coran said he was talking to the prisoners we rescued earlier, but I don’t know where he went after that.”

Lance stopped pacing, heart sinking. “Think they knew anything about Shiro?”

Pidge shrugged. “Something. How helpful it’ll be, though...”

“Yeah.”

Lance’s mind started down a familiar path, like it did whenever he thought too hard about all of this. About Matt and Shiro’s time in Galra prisons, about being a paladin of Voltron, about the sheer scale of what they were trying to do. The weight of unfamiliar space all around him, thousands of lightyears between him and Earth, pressed down on him. Matt and Shiro had been away from home for a year already; would Lance reach that milestone before this war was over? He couldn’t imagine lasting that long away from his family, away from the sights and sounds of Earth.

 _You think you’ve got it bad?_ he chided himself. _Try going through everything Matt’s dealt with. Then you can start whining._

Before Lance could get too wrapped up in thoughts of home, the door opened and Matt entered. Everyone else had changed out of their armor after the day’s training. Allura and Coran had Altean bath robe-looking things, Pidge and Hunk their Earth clothes, Lance the blue silk pajamas he’d made himself out of stolen bedsheets.

Matt didn’t have anything to change into, except the rags he’d been wearing when he’d escaped the Galra prison, so he was still dressed in the form-fitting black bodysuit they all wore under their armor.

Seeing this, Lance spun toward the blanket fort with a cry of, “That’s _right!_ ”

Matt and Pidge’s confused gazes burned into his backside as he dove into one of the side chambers of the blanket fort, where he’d stashed a few specials surprises. He emerged with a pair of red silk pajamas and shoved them at Matt.

“What’s this?” Matt asked, staring down at the fabric in his hands.

“PJs,” Lance said. “ _Duh._ This is a slumber party, isn’t it? You’ve gotta be comfortable.”

Pidge grinned at Matt’s dumbfounded expression. “Lance asked me to have Rover take your measurements. We figured you’d appreciate something more comfy to sleep in, and Lance offered to make them. Apparently he’s quite the _tailor_ ,” they added with a sly grin at Lance.

“Ha, ha.” Lance pushed Pidge off the snack table and toward the blanket fort. “Get inside, Gunderson.”

Laughing, Pidge snagged a bowl of tuber chips and scurried between two hanging sheets. Lance started to follow, but a hand on his arm stopped him. He turned, shooting a questioning look at Matt.

“I...thanks.” Matt stared at his PJs, still looking a little stunned. “This is really thoughtful of you, Lance.”

Flushing, Lance looked toward the blanket fort. “Eh, I was going to make some for the whole team, anyway. I just found the red sheets first.”

Matt laughed and ruffled Lance’s hair. “Well, thanks anyway.”

“Hey, watch the hair,” Lance complained, twisting away. He smoothed his hair down and flailed in the direction of the fort. “Just get changed and meet us inside, all right?”

* * *

Five minutes later, they were all gathered in the blanket fort. Snacks had been passed around, spilled, and cleaned up. Everyone had a glass of their preferred alien soda. The first drink gave Lance the same buzz as a shot of espresso, which boded well for the rest of the night—though maybe not for Pidge, who downed an entire glass of the sour apple soda in one go.

It was, of course, Allura who got them moving. Even though she was wearing a royal nightgown, she sat with the same stiff, attentive posture as always, like she was attending court instead of a slumber party.

“You said this is a traditional Earth team building exercise, correct?”

Lance scratched the back of his neck. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Excellent. What do we do?”

“Whatever we want.” Pidge had immediately flopped on their back in the middle of a mound of pillows, a bowl of tuber chips on their chest, so their shrug looked more like an attempt to burrow deeper into their nest. They tossed a chip in their mouth. “There’s not exactly a schedule we have to follow.”

Allura blinked. “Oh.”

“I believe you mentioned several activities earlier,” Coran said. He was doing a little better at relaxing than Allura, but his perch atop a small stack of pillows was precarious at best. “What was it? Truth and lies, ten questions, something about a bottle…?”

Lance perked up. “Spin the bottle, _yes_!”

“Spin the bottle _no_ ,” Pidge argued, throwing a pillow at Lance’s face. He had to hand it to them, they had great aim for someone slowly being eaten by silk. “Let’s start with truth or dare.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?” Matt asked, sitting cross-legged between Pidge and Allura.

“Because I _kill_ at dares?”

Lance tucked the pillow that had been so rudely chucked at his face behind his head. “Is that a challenge?”

Pidge grinned. “For you? Absolutely.”

“Okay, now _I’m_ scared,” Hunk muttered. He turned to Allura and Coran, who were looking on with vague but confused smiles. “Don’t worry, it’s easy. When it’s your turn, you pick truth or dare. If you pick truth, you have to answer one question--”

“ _Honestly_ ,” Pidge added. “No lying.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Obviously. That’s why it’s called _truth_ or dare.”

Hunk shushed them both. “If you pick dare, you have to complete one task.”

“Within reason,” Matt added, glancing pointedly at Pidge. “Nothing dangerous, and nothing that’s going to take more than a few minutes to do.”

“Are you still mad about that?” Pidge poked their head up over the pillows to give Matt a dirty look. “It was _one_ time.”

Matt attempted a glare, but couldn’t quite stifle his laughter. “I almost got arrested!”

“Then you should have been faster!”

Hunk glanced at Lance. “You sure you want to take on their dares?”

Lance flipped his hand dismissively. “Oh, please. Like I’m going to back down from this.”

“Of course.” Hunk smiled at Allura and Coran. “Anyway, once you’re done, you pick someone else and it’s their turn.”

Allura folded her hands in her lap. “Easy enough. Who starts?”

Pidge gave a wicked grin, but Matt was faster. “Hunk,” he said, smirking as Pidge gasped an overly dramatic protest. “Truth or dare.”

“Truth,” Hunk said immediately.

Lance groaned and flopped back. “Booooring.” He stuffed a green food goo cookie in his mouth as Hunk scowled at him.

Matt thought for a moment, then said, “If you could have any super power--?”

“Precognition,” Hunk said before Matt had even finished, which seemed to surprise Matt. There was no way he could have known that Hunk and Lance had debated super powers into the wee hours of the morning on more than one occasion. (For what it was worth, Lance still thought Hunk should go with teleportation or pyrokinesis.)

“Why’s that?” Pidge asked.

For an instant, Hunk’s face tightened. Then he glanced at Lance and smirked. “So I could see when Lance was going to do something stupid and get away.”

“Very funny,” Lance said. “You and I both know I’m too unpredictable to be foiled by one measly psychic.”

Hunk laughed as he studied the circle. “Allura, truth or dare?”

Allura sat up a little straighter, as though she hadn’t expected to hear her name so soon. She recovered quickly, though, and leaned forward with a confident smile. “Dare.”

A round of _oohs_ passed among the humans, except for Hunk, who stared at them all like they were the aliens. He reached around Lance for the platter of “cheese” and “crackers.” “I dare you to stuff your mouth full of crackers and try to whistle.”

For a moment, there was utter silence in the blanket fort. Lance, for one, was dumbfounded—Hunk was usually the type of person who only ever handed out lame dares. Wear a flower crown for an hour, paint your nails neon yellow, that sort of thing. Lance had figured if Allura went for “dare,” Hunk would be even more lenient, since she was a princess and everything. And, true, this wasn’t the most outlandish dare in the universe, but Allura was the definition of poised, and making her spit cracker bits everywhere was…

Well, Lance figured it was Hunk’s way of making sure Allura was committed to this. They’d all had a rough day of Altean team-building, and if Lance knew anything about Hunk, the big guy was more bitter about the effect it had had on his friends than whatever issues he himself had had.

 _You agreed to try our way,_ this dare seemed to say. _Prove it._

Even more surprising than Hunk’s stone-faced stare, though, was Allura’s total lack of argument. She took the platter from Hunk and hesitated for only a brief moment before cramming six cracker-like-cakes into her mouth, chewed once or twice, and pursed her lips.

When she blew, bits of cracker sprayed around the blanket fort. Lance and Pidge raised pillows as shield, while Matt just leaned back out of the line of fire. All of them burst out laughing—even more so when Allura calmly chewed, swallowed, and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Is that acceptable?” she asked.

Hunk wiped a tear from his eye and flashed her a thumbs up. “That’s way more than just acceptable.”

“You’re going to do just fine in this game, Princess,” Matt said, grinning.

Allura returned the smile. “Wonderful. Does that mean it’s my turn?” At the round of nods, Allura tapped her chin and studied the others. Lance got the sense she was surveying a battlefield, trying to figure out the most strategic place to strike. At last she smiled and squared her shoulders. “Pidge. Truth? Or _dare_?”

Lance didn’t know how someone could make the word _dare_ sound so ominous, but he couldn’t blame Pidge when they picked truth instead.

“Have you ever broken something that wasn’t yours and then lied about what happened?”

Pidge’s eyes darted to Matt so quickly Lance almost missed it. “Um… yes. Lance, truth or dare?”

“Oh, no, no, no.” Lance wagged a finger at Pidge, grinning as they squirmed. “There are no one word answers in truth or dare. What’d you break, and whose was it?”

Pidge sank down into the pillows like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. “Wellllll, there was one time I wanted to see how Matt’s mp3 player worked and I accidentally cracked the screen...and ruined the headphone jack...and then gave it to our dog so she’d get blamed.”

“ _What?_ ”

Matt’s voice made Pidge cower deeper into the pillows, their voice so muffled it was almost inaudible. “I also blamed the dog for eating your sunglasses and favorite shirt, but that was an accident with a soldering gun that Mom didn’t want me using by myself, so… Sorry?”

Matt looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or give Pidge a time out, so he just sat there, red in the face and jaw slack with betrayal that had even Allura laughing into her hand.

Pidge covered their face with a pillow. “Lance, it’s your turn now, please, hurry.”

Through the laughter, Lance somehow managed to choke out a, “Dare.” His good humor didn’t survive long. Pidge crawled out of their pillow nest and leaned over to whisper in Lance’s ear.

“I dare you to spend the next hour pretending every single conspiracy theory about aliens is true about Allura and Coran. I’m talking pyramids, little green men, Area 51, abductions, probes, flying saucers. Ask them for the truth, and the more they deny it, the more obsessed with ‘the Truth’ you get. Oh, and work it into the conversation naturally, all right? No blatant _Pidge told me to ask you about your flying saucer!_ ”

Lance was honestly impressed. “Taking full advantage of the situation, eh, Gunderson?”

Pidge only grinned. “You know it. Anyway, it’s your turn.”

“Hold on,” Coran said, leaning forward to squint at the pair of them. “What about his dare?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Pidge said. “It’s coming.”

Matt raised his eyebrows, thoroughly unsurprised, as Pidge went back to their nest and poured another glass of green apple soda. Lance stuck his tongue out at them, the gears in his mind already turning. If he was going to do this dare, he was going to _do_ _this dare._

He just had to wait for the right opportunity.

“In the mean time… Coran, you haven’t had a turn yet! Truth...or dare?” He cackled like a cartoon witch, just for good measure—not that it meant anything to Coran.

He stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Truth.”

 _Perfect._ “Have you ever been to Earth?”

Pidge choked on their soda.

“Earth?” Coran cocked his head. “I don’t believe so, no.”

“Ah, ah, ah.” Lance held up a finger. “ _No lying_ , remember.”

Coran frowned, and Hunk looked at Lance like he’d lost his mind. Lance fought to keep a straight face because, dammit, he wasn’t going to let Pidge make a fool out of him. Matt, meanwhile, was frowning suspiciously at Pidge, who was now just a quivering lump under a blanket.

Slowly, Coran glanced to Allura. “I… suppose I haven’t looked for Earth on our star charts yet. Was there perhaps a different species living there ten thousand years ago?”

“I don’t know, Coran, _was_ there?”

Coran didn’t have an answer for that, so it was Allura who asked, “Is this some sort of human rite of initiation?”

“Yes,” Matt said wearily, at the exact same time Lance shouted, “No!” Matt glared at Lance, who glared at Coran.

“You promised me the truth!”

“It’s your turn, Coran,” Matt said. “Go ahead and pick someone.”

Both of the Alteans stared at Lance for another moment, as though trying to figure out what sort of joke they were missing out on. Lance turned away, trying to act casual, even though Pidge’s snickers were prickling at his ears. He spotted Rover hovering as a support in the corner of the blanket room.

“Hey, guys, does anyone else think it’s weird the Galra drones are all shaped like pyramids?”

* * *

Truth or Dare lasted longer than anyone had anticipated. The truths and the dares escalated as everyone tried to one-up each other and got revenge for previous rounds. An hour later Lance was sprawled in Hunk’s lap (a dare from Matt that hadn’t been as embarrassing as he’d anticipated—in fact, Lance could have moved twenty minutes ago, but neither he nor Hunk seemed in any rush to break apart.) Coran had made all their ears bleed with his bad karaoke, while Lance had seemed more embarrassed at being caught singing along to the music Pidge had on their laptop in the background. He actually didn’t have a terrible voice.

Throughout it all, Lance kept up his casual conspiracy theorizing, which Matt was now entirely certain had been Pidge’s first dare. Though Matt had to admit Lance knew how to commit. He’d managed to get Allura to concede complicity in at least four alien abductions via giant blue lion, and Coran was still intermittently checking the castle’s database in an attempt to translate crop circles into an actual alien message. Every time one of the Alteans mentioned an alien planet, Lance commented about Area 51.

(Admittedly, Allura turning into a little-green-man-style alien had been a surprise for everyone, but none more than Lance, who’s scream could have shattered glass.)

Eventually Pidge, Lance, and Coran—who only ever picked dare—had separated from Matt, Hunk, and Allura—who found the truths far more interesting. The truth crew retreated deeper into the blanket fort where they could talk without shrieks, shouts, and laughter interrupting them.

Matt told himself to just not pay attention to what dares were being handed out. He had definitely heard Pidge say something about ‘survive the gladiator on the highest difficulty for one minute,’ which hadn’t done anything to ease Matt’s concern.

They had all survived, though. That was something.

Allura eventually put an end to the game of Dare or Dare—right after one of them set of the castle’s fire alarms. Lance whined and Pidge sulked and Coran tried not to look too guilty, but they all called a reluctant truce.

Someone suggested 20 Questions, which very quickly got derailed by an impromptu pillow fight. (Allura won, surprisingly enough, and ruined no fewer than four pillows in the process.) That faded to scary stories—though by now it was well past midnight and the stories provoked more giggles than shivers, especially the Altean scary stories, which seemed to rely on a very different set of fears.

Coran produced a deck of cards unlike anything Matt was used to. There were five suits, for starters—one for each Voltron lion, supposedly, though that might have been a joke. It was hard to tell, as late as it was and as punch-drunk as everyone had become.

Still, they were cards, and Lance and Hunk hammered out some rules for a game of spoons. Not ordinary spoons, of course, because that would be too boring. No, each round the spoons—well, sporks—were buried in the blankets in a different blanket-fort room. When someone got five of a kind, there was a mad scramble through the narrow corridors. Hunk got trampled once, Coran wound up with a black eye to match his purple mustache (courtesy of Lance’s dares), and once when Allura and Pidge dove for the last spork it ended up embedded in the training drone holding up the ceiling in that room.

It must have been close to dawn when people started collapsing. Hunk and Pidge faded first, falling asleep in a heap by the computer where they’d dug through Pidge’s files until they found an old anime Pidge had torrented. Coran was next, passing out in the middle of a story about his youth. Something about mice and ghosts, or ghost mice, or…? Matt had lost track of the story long before Coran trailed off.

Lance bedded down before too much longer, whistling the X-Files tune as he passed under one of the castles floating platters—flying saucers, Lance insisted. He joined Pidge and Hunk in their room with a sleep mask he’d produced from his endless stash of secrets. Matt was halfway tempted to take a peek to see just how many more surprises he’d had ready to produce.

Instead, he set about clearing away some of the leftover snacks. The castle’s robots could clean up most of it, but only what was already outside the blanket fort. (Lance had made Coran reprogram the robots for the night so there wouldn’t be any accidental dismantling of the blanket fort.)

Allura joined him at the snack table outside the fort, balancing four mostly empty bowls on her arms. “I wanted to thank you for this,” she said.

“The slumber party?” Matt asked. “It was Pidge’s idea.”

“Yes, but it was you who suggested Earth bonding exercises in the first place.”

Matt turned away, face hot. Back on Earth, it was always the pilot or the commander who dealt with the media, and Matt was neither. _Had been_ neither, he supposed, now that the Red Lion had chosen him. Still, he’d always preferred to stay in the wings while other people took center stage. People like Lance and Allura. People like Shiro.

He tried not to think about Shiro.

“I just figured it would be more their speed,” he said. “They were all training as soldiers, I know, and they’re all ready to join the fight against Zarkon, but… they’re also still kids.” He stopped, shaking his head. “They’d kill me if they heard me say that.”

“It’s true, though,” Allura said. “I should have taken that into account when I planned out our training. It’s no wonder they were frustrated.”

Matt shrugged. “On the bright side, they’ve all probably forgotten about it by now.”

“Indeed.”

They were silent for a while, shuttling the last few cups and bowls out of the blanket fort. Coran’s snoring was the only sound in the silence. Even Pidge’s lights had dimmed themselves to just a few pinpricks overhead.

“Could I ask you something, your Highness?”

Allura set down her dishes and turned toward him. “Please, call me Allura.”

“All right, then.” Matt squared his shoulder. “Allura. Do you really think we can do this?”

She blinked, startled. “What do you mean?”

“ _This_.” Matt gestured around hopelessly. “Voltron...Zarkon… I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others, but I look at us and I see a bunch of misfit amateurs who don’t stand a chance.”

Frowning, Allura clasped her hands at her waist. “The lions chose you four. They must have seen great potential in you, which is worth more to me than any amount of experience.”

“I got captured two months into my first mission,” Matt argued. “Pidge, Hunk, and Lance? They haven’t even finished their training!”

“And yet you all have faced the Galra three times already. You escaped once, and won the next two battles.” Allura smiled as Matt was left without an answer to her words. “Experience can be gained. Potential—the potential to pilot the lions, the potential to form Voltron, the potential to lead the fight against Zarkon—all these things you have are things that can’t be gained through training and combat.”

It was a nice thought. That they were heroes—young, inexperienced, untested heroes, but heroes all the same. Matt didn’t want to disagree, but he thought Allura was giving them all far too much credit.

She must have seen his doubts, for she placed a hand on his shoulder. “No one expects you to defeat Zarkon tomorrow,” she said gently. “Let’s just take it one day at a time. Do what we can, each chance we get, until those small steps build into something spectacular.”

“One day at a time, huh?”

She nodded, studied him for a moment, and then stepped back. “It’s late. Shall we join the others and get some rest?”

“I think I’ll take a walk first,” Matt said, forcing a smile. “You don’t need to wait up.” He waited, smiling through her concerned silence, until she headed back inside the blanket fort, and then he headed out into the ship in search of some peace of mind.

* * *

Sleep was hard to find.

That was and had always been true for Lance, and tonight was no exception. The curse of having an overactive mind, he supposed. Even when his body was exhausted, his mind refused to slow enough for sleep. Sure, the sugar hadn’t helped, but Lance knew that was just a convenient excuse.

Truth was, he hadn’t slept well the last two nights, either. The castle was a strange place, full of strange shadows and unfamiliar noises. He’d made himself a mask, and that had helped somewhat, but he was still hyper-aware of the _newness_ of the place. The creak of metal, the rush of air, the whir of electronics, the hum of heaters.

He missed the room he’d shared with Hunk at the Garrison, with its familiar beds, the box fan they ran for white noise as much as for relief from the desert heat, the tape and towels covering every power light in the room.

He missed _home_ more than he had when he was at the Garrison. Bad enough to be a few hundred miles from his brother and his sister and his cousins down the street and his grandparents across town. Bad enough to stare at pictures of home knowing he had to wait another three months for the next break from training.

Now, a million miles away with no idea when he’d make it home, Lance felt the distance more acutely than ever. He pulled his mask down around his neck, took his phone out from under his pillow, and held down the power button. He knew it wouldn’t turn on—he’d run it down to dead in the first two days staring at pictures and watching the _no service_ indicator in the vain hope that he would somehow catch a cell tower all the way out here on Arus.

The phone remained dark, and the only surprise was that it still had the power to leave Lance breathless.

The others were all deeply asleep by now, their breath slow and steady. Coran snored somewhere nearby. The drones hummed softly as they held up the blanket fort around them all. Lance lay there, dead phone pressed against his stomach, and stared at the fuzzy glow of LEDs Pidge had set up around this room.

Sighing, he sat up. He waited, holding his breath, to make sure he wasn’t disturbing anyone, then stood and slipped out of the fort.

Outside was cooler and also brighter, a strip of light around the edge of the room giving him light enough to walk without falling flat on his face. The corridors were brighter still, their lights dimmed for the night but not off completely.

He walked without a destination in mind, moving just to work out the knots in his mind. Let his thoughts think themselves out so he could fall asleep before dawn. But rather than calm him, the sterile, orderly, white-lit halls only made him remember where he was. _This isn’t Earth,_ the castle told him with every step. _This isn’t home._

Eventually, he found himself on the bridge, where five elevators led down to the lions’ hangars. The room was dark, but tiny flecks of light spun through the air, names and coordinates flashing beside them.

“You’re still up?”

Lance stopped, turning toward the voice, and found Matt sitting with his back against Allura’s control terminal. He patted the ground beside him.

Lance hesitated for only a moment, then went to sit beside Matt. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said.

“Yeah.” Matt let out a long breath. “I know the feeling.”

Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised Lance, but it did. “Do you miss Earth, too?” He realized at once what a stupid question that was and buried his face in his knees. “You don’t have to answer that.”

Matt was silent for a moment. “I do,” he said softly. “I miss Earth. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about it for so long. After a few months in the Galra prisons, I stopped thinking about escape. It didn’t seem possible, so it was easier not to miss anything. Now...” He sighed. “I got that one glimpse of Earth, and that tore down all the walls I’d built up. I miss Earth again, more than I have for a long time.”

The stars and planets drifted by overhead and Lance watched them silently. It was easier than thinking. Easier than figuring out what to say to Matt. Lance hadn’t meant to come to Matt for comfort, but that’s exactly what he’d done, forgetting that Matt needed comfort way more than Lance did.

“It’s okay to miss home,” Matt said, so softly Lance almost thought he’d imagined it.

“What?”

Matt turned toward him, half a smile on his face. “You miss home. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Lance hunched his shoulders to cut off his view of Matt’s sympathetic look. “You’ve been gone a lot longer than I have.”

“It’s not a competition, Lance.”

“Good, because I’d be losing it.”

Matt laughed, loose and genuine, and that eased the vice in Lance’s chest. He let himself watch the star map filling the bridge, tracing the path of planets and moons, reading names of a million stars. He didn’t know any of them. How many would he visit before he made it back to Earth?

A hand settled on his back, rubbing slow circles. Lance glanced over at Matt, a wordless question on his lips.

“You’re not alone here, Lance,” he said softly. “I know it’s scary, and I know it feels like you’re never going to see home, and--” He grimaced. “I know. But you’ve got Hunk and Pidge and me. You don’t have to deal with this on your own.”

It was an awkward sort of comfort, the offer of someone who wasn’t sure how much his comfort was worth. Someone who was trying his best to be someone others could rely on when it was obvious, at least to Lance, that he needed support as much as anyone.

With a small smile, Lance looped his arm around Matt’s neck. “Sounds like a deal to me,” he said brightly. “I’ll come find you whenever I’m feeling down—and you come find me when _you’re_ blue.” He elbowed Matt in the ribs. “Get it? Blue? Cause I’m the blue paladin?”

Matt, who had already started to protest Lance’s deal, stopped and rubbed his side. Then he shook his head. “Hilarious.”

“I _am_ pretty awesome, aren’t I?”

Matt pushed against the side of Lance’s head, laughing. “Let’s not get carried away.”

Lance grinned.

They stayed on the bridge for fifteen or twenty minutes, mostly sitting in silence and watching the stars. Matt didn’t offer any shallow words of comfort, but Lance appreciated the company anyway. As lonely as it felt, being on a strange planet with only five other people for company, it would have been infinitely worse to spend a year in a Galra prison where you didn’t know anyone. Matt understood what Lance was afraid to say; it was amazing how much that simple fact helped.

Eventually they dragged themselves back to the rec room and crawled into the blanket fort. Matt stretched out on his back beside Pidge while Lance made his way to the far side of Hunk.

When he reached the mess of blankets where he’d been laying earlier, his hand found something small and curved. Were those… headphones?

They were. Pidge’s headphones, the cord removed and a small square control panel attached to the outside of the left earpiece. There was a piece of paper lying underneath the headphones. Lance had to hold it up close to the lights to make out the handwritten words.

_Noticed you were having trouble sleeping. A little canary told me you like to listen to music as you fall asleep, so I threw together a music player. Hunk put together a playlist for you. You can go through my library tomorrow for more._

Lance sat back, the note in one hand, Pidge’s headphones in the other. For the first time all night, his mind was quiet. Tears burned behind his eyes and a lump rose in his throat, and he was glad for the darkness so the others wouldn’t see him getting all sappy.

“Thanks, guys,” he whispered to the darkness. He didn’t know if Hunk or Pidge was still awake, and his voice was so quiet they might not have heard him anyway.

He settled the headphones over his ears and fiddled with the buttons until he managed to turn it on and adjust the volume to a low, pleasant level. He didn’t know this song very well, but it was vaguely familiar, a simple, mellow tune with only a few lyrics repeated over and over. The background noise of Earth.

Lance sank into the blankets, his mask and Pidge’s headphones blocking out the rest of the world. His mind slipped into the music and drifted away into quiet, dark, dreamless sleep.


	8. Fallen Foes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... The paladins took a break from training and the stress of their new life to have a slumber party. Dares were dared, truths were revealed, and Lance got a new pair of headphones.

The day after the giant robot-beast (or, ‘robeast,’ if you will) attacked, Allura had them all right back in training. Lance cried foul, but he was overruled by everyone else in the castle. True, Allura had lightened up some. Combat training was mostly attacking dummies and robots that moved but didn’t fight back. Coran set the castle defenses to “non-lethal” while they trained in their lions, and they ate breakfast sans handcuffs.

Still, Lance would have liked to sleep in and have a lazy day. He couldn’t be expected to function after staying up until the alien equivalent for four in the morning telling ghosts stories and eating sweet and salty food goo snacks.

Fortunately for Lance, they only got in half a day of practice before the castles sensors interrupted target practice. (Lance could aim a gun, thank you very much. It was the aliens trying to kill him part that freaked him out.)

Coran’s voice came on over the comms. “I think you’d best have a look at this, Princess.”

Allura, who had been sparring with the gladiator, spun into a kick that knocked it across the room. “End training,” she called, then turned to the other four paladins. “Keep working. I’ll be right back.”

Matt and Pidge exchanged looks as Allura left the room. Lance didn’t bother pretending he was going to stay here and sweat some more if he didn’t have to. He followed Allura out of the training area, ignoring the frown she sent his way.

A few seconds later, the other three joined them.

Allura heaved a sigh. “All right, then. I suppose we’ll _all_ go see what’s happening.”

“It could be an enemy,” Pidge pointed out as Rover floated over to join them. The little drone wasn’t allowed on the training deck, where it might get shot by a stray laser, but it was basically glued to Pidge’s shoulder the rest of the time.

Lance grinned. “Yeah. We’re just being cautious like good little paladins.” Hunk snorted at that, and Lance glared at him. “What, I’m not allowed to take my job seriously?”

“Try it again without the phrase ‘good little paladin,’ and I might believe you.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t an enemy. At least...not an enemy they had to worry about. Coran thought the little snail-looking thing was one of the locals—an Arusian, apparently. The little guy had a crude spear, but then again he was barely two feet tall.

“I hope we don’t have to fight him,” Lance whispered to Hunk as Allura studied the video feed from the castle’s front doors. “I’d feel bad.”

“No kidding,” Hunk said. “You could sit on him and win the fight.”

“There will be no fighting,” Allura said. Not for the first time, Lance wondered if her elf ears gave her super hearing, because he hadn’t thought they were talking loud enough to be overheard. “Alteans believe in peace. If we talk to them, we may be able to avoid conflict altogether.”

Lance glanced at the screen and the alien currently hiding (poorly) behind a rock. He was actually kind of cute, once you got past the slightly slimy yellowish skin. “Do you think it would help if I knit him a sweater?”

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think we have time for that.”

They were probably right, but Lance wasn’t going to admit that. “Killjoy.”

“Let’s just...go see what the Arusian wants.” Matt nodded at Allura. “You’d better do all the talking.”

“Definitely don’t let Lance talk to them,” Pidge added.

“Hey!”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “What? You’re either gonna insult them, or you’re gonna try out some new terrible pick-up lines, and either one could get us attacked.”

Souring, Lance crossed his arms. “I don’t flirt with _everyone_ I see, _Pidge_.”

“That’s true. Should I be offended you’ve never hit on me, or proud that you’re too scared to try?”

“Scared?!”

Allura sighed loudly, cutting the argument short. Without saying anything to the other paladins, she stood, nodded to Coran, and headed for the elevator that would take them all down to the front doors. Lance scurried after her. He wasn’t about to be left out of meeting his first friendly alien species. (Well, second, but Alteans were basically human, so they barely counted.)

The others all piled into the elevator behind Lance—all except Coran, who was staying to monitor the situation and activate the castle’s defenses if needed. Lance wasn’t sure what he was expecting to happen, because he seriously doubted the Arusians had any kind of big guns.

As they all filed out through the front doors, the Arusian yelped and dove for cover.

“It’s all right. We mean you no harm,” Allura said, spreading her arms to show she was unarmed. Matt held his bayard at his side, though he hadn’t yet activated it. Everyone else watched in silence as the Arusian slowly poked his head out from behind the rock. He held his spear high as though ready for a fight. But seeing as his spear was a sharp rock (or, like, a crab claw? Were there crabs in space?) tied to a stick, Lance wasn’t all that worried.

With a deep breath, the Arusian jumped out into the open, assuming a battle-ready stance with the pointy end of his spear aimed at Allura. “I am Klaizap, bravest of our warriors!”

Beside Lance, Hunk cooed.

Allura flashed him a warning look, then bowed her head in greeting. “I am Allura, Princess of Altea and Paladin of Voltron.”

Klaizap’s eyes went wide and, whispering something that sounded like _lion goddess_ , he dropped his spear and threw himself to the ground. Lance raised an eyebrow in Allura’s direction.

“I feel like neglecting to mention you’re a goddess is breaking the rules of truth or dare.”

Aside from a twitch of her eye, Allura showed no sign of having heard Lance. She knelt beside Klaizap, who was still stretched out like he was worshiping her. “I think there’s been some misunderstanding. Who is the lion goddess?”

Klaizap cautiously raised his head, studied Allura, then led her to the base of a ruined pillar. He pulled back the grass to reveal a worn carving of a giant...well, lion goddess, Lance supposed. A bunch of snail-horned figures bowed down to either side.

Pidge crouched down beside the pillar for a closer look, then glanced at Allura. “Is this...Voltron?”

“It may be.” Allura folded her hands before her, face going all regal, and gave Klaizap a bland smile. “I’m afraid I’m not your lion goddess, Klaizap, just a friend.”

Klaizap’s face fell. “Then we are truly doomed.”

“Doomed?” Allura’s composure faltered for a moment before she remembered herself. “What do you mean?”

“We have witnesses strange beings in the sky,” Klaizap said, waving his hand toward the clouds. “They rain fire on our land and shake the earth with their rage. The lion goddess has ignored our cries for help, so I came to her temple.”

A pang of guilt stabbed through Lance’s gut, and from the looks on the others’ faces, they all felt the same. All their training, the battles against Sendak and the robeast—Lance hadn’t stopped to think what any of that would look like to whoever might be living on Arus. He’d never wanted to make someone think the world was ending.

Allura was the first to find her voice. “Klaizap,” she said with an encouraging smile. “I may not be your goddess, but we are protectors, of a sort. Your world was attacked by an enemy called the Galra, but we defeated their champion. You have nothing to worry about.”

No one brought up the fact that the Galra were still out there and might send more monsters to Arus. The Galra were Team Voltron’s problem, not the Arusians'.

Besides, Klaizap looked so adorably hopeful at Allura’s words it would take a complete jerk to ruin it.

“Then we are safe?”

Allura nodded. “Klaizap, could you take me back to your people? I would like to apologize for alarming them.”

Klaizap nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. We will throw a great festival in honor of our saviors!”

Allura blinked, apparently speechless, while Lance pumped his fist. “Hell yeah! Who’s gonna say no to a festival in our honor? Not this guy.” He turned, looking for support, and found only wry amusement.

Chuckling, Allura raised a hand to her earrings, which contained a communicator. “Coran, we’re going to meet with the local Arusians. Would you like to join us?” Lance couldn’t hear the response with his helmet off, but a moment later Allura nodded. “He’s going to stay and work on the castle’s engine. He would like for one of you to stay and help him, if that’s all right.”

Lance held his hands up in front of him. “Trust me, you do _not_ want me messing with an alien engine. I didn’t even know the castle _had_ an engine— _why_ does the castle have an engine?”

“The same reason any ship has an engine.” Allura frowned. “Do humans not have vehicles?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Lance waved his hands furiously. “The castle is a _ship_? Since when?!”

Allura looked a little unnerved by his outburst. “Since… it was built?” She glanced quickly at the other three, who seemed more intrigued than freaked out, like _oh, hey, our castle is a space ship, no big, whatever, wanna grab some lunch?_ “Would any of you three like to stay?”

Matt opened his mouth, but Pidge quickly elbowed him in the side. He frowned, and then his mouth formed an ‘O’ of understanding. “Sorry, but Pidge and I actually had something else we wanted to look into today.”

Allura glanced at Hunk, who shrugged. “I’d actually love to take a closer look at Altean engines, so no complaints here.”

“Then it’s settled,” Allura said. “Hunk and Coran will fix the engine, Lance and I will go to the Arusians, and Matt and Pidge will...” She hesitated.

Pidge scratched their ear. “Let’s just call it reconnaissance.”

Lance gave them a suspicious look, but they ignored it. Allura, for her part, didn’t seem to mind the caginess of the answer and turned to smile at Klaizap. “Lead the way, warrior Klaizap.”

After one last long, hard look at Matt and Pidge, Lance followed Klaizap and Allura. He didn’t know what the Holts were up to, but he’d bet it wouldn’t be half as great as the festival the Arusians were going to throw for Lance and Allura. He couldn’t believe the others were going to miss out on a party for nerd stuff.

 _Their loss,_ he thought, waving his helmet at the others in farewell.

* * *

“They’re splitting up.”

Haxus sounded surprised, even a little suspicious, as he squinted through his binoculars at the paladins gathered around the pathetic excuse for a warrior the locals had sent. Sendak only grinned.

“Fools,” he whispered. “This is exactly the chance we need.” He spotted the stolen drone hovering near the green paladin. “Clone that drone’s security ID.”

Haxus was an exemplary soldier and lieutenant for many reasons, but most of all because he didn’t ask questions. Before Sendak had even finished giving his order, Haxus was already moving, slithering down the hillside to the shrubs that bordered the road to the Castle of Lions. It was still some distance from there to the doors where the paladins were gathered, but it should be close enough. The only other drone in the area was the one dutifully following Haxus, waiting for its new clearance code.

Moments later, as the paladins split off, two following the Arusian toward the foothills, the other three returning to the castle, Haxus rejoined Sendak at the top of the slope. He aimed his scanner at his drone and transmitted the new credentials.

The drone glowed briefly white, flashed twice, then adopted a blue-green hue like the stolen drone’s.

Sendak watched the princess disappear over a rise in the land and smiled. “Set the charges. We take the castle now.”

* * *

The shuttle Torrak provided for Keith and Shiro was old, cramped, and one solid knock away from being scrapped. Not that Keith was surprised. It wasn’t as though Orgul was going to bother returning the shuttle to the _Envoy_. Torrak had been ordered to provide transport, but Haggar hadn’t specified the quality.

So Keith was stuck piloting an old cargo shuttle. It had a wormhole generator, fortunately, but it was at least a century out of date, so instead of taking them directly to the _Herald_ , it was only going to be able to cover a tenth the distance with each jump.

Add to that the need for cooldown between wormholes and the fact that there were countless hazards lurking in deep space, and Keith was ready to take a sword to Torrak’s face. Shiro had been glad for the chance to learn about Galran navigational systems, and his company had at least somewhat moderated the sheer weight of Keith's frustration.

Eventually, though, they had their route planned out. It was going to take them several hours to reach the _Herald—_ plenty long enough for the _Envoy_ to make the trip itself and return, not that Torrak cared.

“Well,” Shiro said brightly. “Best get started.”

Keith grumbled his response as he tossed their bags into a storage bin behind the copilot’s chair and settled in a the controls. “Why are you so cheery?”

Shiro shrugged, strapping himself in. “Excited to see some action, I suppose.”

Keith opened his mouth to remind Shiro what they were likely to see on the front lines, where the Galra were actively suppressing resistance. Then he hesitated, sneaking a look at Shiro. That had probably been a joke, and if Keith hadn’t been so tired he might even have found it funny.

Shiro seemed to catch onto his foul mood, for his smile faltered. “Sorry. This must be hard for you.”

“No.”

Shiro paused. “What?”

“It’s not hard.”

“You’re about to betray your people. I mean, you already have, but this is different. There’s no turning back from this.” Shiro searched his face. “I understand if it’s stressful for you.”

Keith met his eyes, scowling. “They’re not my people.”

There was a long silence, during which Keith cursed himself. There were a great many reasons for Keith to hate Zarkon and his empire. The things they’d done to Shiro had just been the last push that sent Keith falling over the cliff into treason.

He didn’t like to talk about it to Shiro. His issues with the Galra were his own, and Shiro had enough to deal with without having Keith’s baggage dumped on him too. But the simple fact of the matter was that, whatever Shiro thought, betraying Zarkon was the easiest thing Keith had ever done.

Forcing a smile for Shiro’s sake, Keith powered up the shuttle. “No point in hanging around, I guess.”

“Yeah...” Shiro sounded like he wanted to press Keith for answers.

He didn’t though, and Keith was grateful. A few hours from now, they were going to be in the thick of a fight for the freedom of an entire planet—and, indirectly, Earth. Keith couldn’t afford to get hung up on thoughts of the past.

He keyed in the coordinates for the first wormhole jump, and once they had clearance from the _Envoy_ , punched the button to open the hole. It was a tight fit, the ship chittering with Quintessential energy as the hull brushed the edges of the portal.

Then they were through, and on their way to the front lines.

* * *

It took Pidge and Matt only a few minutes to get down to their lions. They were already suited up, thanks to the morning’s training, so they passed Lance, Allura, and Klaizap on the road from the castle. Now that they knew where to look, Pidge could see a small village tucked in the foothills near a river that fed into the lake. The small, rounded buildings were thatched with grass and painted in soft greens and yellows, so from a distance it looked like part of the landscape.

It was almost on a direct line from the castle to the desert where Sendak’s warship had crash landed, which meant yesterday would have seen a lot of low-flying lions just above the village.

Pidge gave the village a wide berth this time, figuring it was better not to scare the Arusians _more_ if they didn’t have to. It took them and Matt a little out of their way, but with the lions’ speed it didn’t make much of a difference. Soon enough they were setting down by the rotting corpse of the robotically enhanced beast that looked like Matt’s friend Simsill.

Matt was slower to leave his lion than Pidge, and he barely glanced at Pidge as he did so. His eyes were glued to the beast, his lips parted, his brow furrowed. After a moment, he clenched his teeth and strode forward, joining Pidge beside the thing.

“We’re looking for a crystal, right?”

“That’s what Allura said.” Pidge glanced over to Rover, who was slowly circling the monster, scanner flashing. “She said crystals are the only power source that could run something this size. I mean, I guess things might have changed in the last ten thousand years, but if that’s true then we have no idea what to look for.”

Matt only nodded and summoned his bayard. It formed a laser pistol, and he frowned, fingers tightening around the grip until, almost grudgingly, it became a sword. Pidge summoned their own bayard, and a moment later Rover returned with the results of his scan.

“Looks like it’s at the base of the neck,” Pidge told Matt. “Not too deep, either.”

“Good.” Matt circled the beast until he got to the crystal’s location, then started hacking at the flesh and metal with his bayard. Pidge joined him, and together they cleared the way to the crystal, layer by layer. It was hot, dirty, smelly work, but the prospect of finding out where Sendak had sent their father kept them both working, chipping away at the corpse bit by bit.

It didn’t take long to get their first glimpse of the crystal—a cloudy violet stone that glowed dimly—but it was at least as big as Pidge, so freeing it took a lot more work.

But then, finally, they had it. Pidge stood back as Matt rammed his sword down behind the crystal, braced one foot against a metal plate on the creature’s back, and levered it out. It stuck once, then lurched free and rolled halfway over on the sand. Pidge shivered at the sight of it. The side facing out had been flat and oblong, but the rest of it—the part sticking deeper into the beast’s spine—was raw and jagged like diamond spires that dripped with blood and that strange purplish liquid.

Matt dismissed his bayard, looking sick. “I hope this thing can power Sendak’s computers.”

* * *

“And this piston gets attached over here...right?”

“It’s not a piston, it’s a flimnap, but yes.” Coran’s voice was slightly muffled—maybe because Hunk was hanging halfway into the engine compartment, suspended by a harness and energy tether, Coran above him directing him as best he could. Maybe because the blood was pooling in Hunk’s head and making everything sound muddy.

He tightened the last bolt quickly and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I think that’s it, then. I’m coming up.”

With a little help from Coran (who was a lot stronger than Hunk would have expected from someone as scrawny as him), Hunk wriggled out of the engine and tossed his wrench back into the toolbox hovering nearby. The engine didn’t look much like what Hunk would normally call an engine. Since they’d cut power to it to do their repairs, it was basically just a metal shell with a bunch of wires, gauges, pipes, and, well, flimnaps, surrounding a spherical core where the crystal’s Quintessence was focused and converted into mechanical energy.

“Nice work,” Coran said, slapping his back.

Hunk grinned and shrugged out of the harness. “Pidge and I have been studying the lions. Figured we might need to do maintenance on them at some point, and it would help if we knew how they worked. They’re Altean, aren’t they?”

“Indeed they are. Allura’s great-grandmother built them seven hundred years ago. Er, no, sorry.” Coran’s smile faltered, just for a moment. “I suppose it would be ten _thousand_ , seven hundred years ago.” Seeing Hunk’s concerned look, Coran brightened up. “Cryo sleep. It messes with your internal clock like you wouldn’t believe!”

“Yeah… I suppose it would.” Hunk grabbed the water bottle he’d left in the toolbox and guzzled half of it in one drink while he tried to figure out something to say. He hadn’t really spent all that much time with ether Altean outside of training—but Coran even less so than Allura. She was a paladin; there was a certain amount of interaction there by default. Coran was… pretty much a stranger.

A stranger who’d lost his whole world just a few days ago, from his perspective. Shouldn’t Hunk be trying to help or something?

“So were you like...an engineer for the castle or something?” Hunk regretted the question the second it left his mouth. First of all, Coran was obviously not an engineer. King Alfor had chosen him specifically to join Allura in the cryopods. Hunk would be the first one to defend the importance of engineers to any mission, but he was also a realist. An ordinary engineer wasn’t on par with royalty on the list of people to save in case of total world annihilation.

Secondly, shouldn’t Hunk have been steering the conversation _away_ from everything Coran had lost?

It was too late to take it back. Coran got a far-off look in his eyes, but he was smiling as he shook his head. “Not an engineer, no, although I did keep abreast of their work. Had to know as much about the castle as King Alfor. I was the one who taught Allura about the ship’s systems, you know.”

“So… you were a tutor?”

“Among other things.” Coran paused, then gestured Hunk over to the crates of spare parts the castle’s drones had dropped by the railing. They sat, and Coran leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “Mostly I was King Alfor’s adviser.”

“Allura’s dad?”

Coran nodded. “King of Altea, but also trainer and mentor to the previous paladins. Alfor and I were friends since we were children.”

“So you’re, like, Altean nobility?”

Coran shook his head, stroking his mustache. “Actually, my family raised yelmores.”

Hunk wasn’t _exactly_ sure what a yelmore was, but it sounded like some kind of animal, so unless they were actual fire-breathing dragons, that put Coran well below royalty on the social ladder. He whistled. “So how’d you end up friends with a king?”

“I brought the milk to the castle every week. Alfor struck up a conversation one day, and… well, the rest is history.”

“Woah.” Hunk held up his hands. “Woah, woah, woah, woah. Hold up. Alfor was going to be king and he just _randomly_ struck up a conversation with a stranger?”

“Alfor was a very trusting man. He always saw the best in people.”

“People like Zarkon?” Hunk asked.

Coran didn’t answer. Hunk had only picked up pieces of the story over the last few days. Hints in the way Allura and Coran spoke of Zarkon’s army, the way they spoke of Altea and Voltron and the war. Zarkon and Alfor had been friends once. Now Alfor was dead and Zarkon ruled half the universe.

Hunk didn’t know the details, but the shape of the situation was plain enough.

It was also plain that Coran didn’t want to discuss it.

“So, okay,” Hunk said. “You’re a nice guy, and Alfor sounds pretty cool, sure, but uh. Didn’t he have bodyguards who had a problem with strangers getting cozy with the future king?”

Coran relaxed almost imperceptibly at the change in topic. “There were guards at the entrance, of course, and they looked into everyone who had business at the castle. But the royal family has always been very approachable, going back all the way to Queen Aniva, Alfor’s grandmother.”

“Was she one who built the lions?”

“Indeed she was. Made quite a stir when she finished, too. See, most people assumed she would give the lions to her staunchest supporters, or else to powerful families she wished to entice into an alliance.”

Hunk was already nodding along; he saw where this was going. “Except the lions choose their pilots.”

“Precisely!” Grinning, Coran raised a finger dramatically. “And none of them chose an Altean noble. The Yellow Lion chose a farmer’s daughter, the Red a schoolteacher. The other three pilots weren’t Altean at all, including the black paladin, who forms Voltron’s head. As a matter of fact, Allura’s the first Altean to lead the paladins.”

“Really?” Hunk nodded, impressed. “Huh.”

“She is something, isn’t she?” Coran wore a fond smile, and Hunk had to wonder how well they knew each other. They seemed very close, almost like family. “Anyway, the nobility was outraged that they had all been passed over in favor of foreigners—a Balmeran, a Nyxt, and a Galra.”

Hunk had been sinking into the rhythm of Coran’s story, but now he snapped upright, his head spinning. “A _Galra_? You’re joking.”

“Not at all.” The most ridiculous part of it all was how relaxed Coran was about this. It was like they weren’t even fighting this war against the Galra empire. “Altea and Galra have always been allies—or they used to be.” He paused, gauging Hunk’s reaction, which still hovered somewhere between _struck by lightning_ and _holy shit aliens are real_ on the scale of impossible things. “Let me put it this way. You are part of the fifth generation of paladins. The first four generations each had at least one Galra pilot—there have been more Galra paladins than any other race besides Altean.”

Stunned, Hunk slumped back against the catwalk’s railing. Okay, sure, he’d known the Galra weren’t always evil warmongers. But that was just because they’d always been quietly tearing their own planet apart, right? He couldn’t picture Sendak or any of his soldiers piloting a lion of Voltron.

Then again, that might explain why Alfor had been so willing to trust Zarkon ten thousand years ago.

Coran gave Hunk a few minutes to process this world-shattering revelation. Then he stood, slapping Hunk’s back. “Well. That’s enough chatter for right now. We’ve still got to test these engines!”

“Yeah.” Hunk shook his head and climbed to his feet. The world still seemed to be sitting at a strange angle. Galra paladins. Who’d have guessed? “Right. Let’s...do that.”

Coran flipped the master switch on the control panel that sat in front of the engine. Blue-white energy began to gather at the engine’s poles, building into two staticy spheres until an arc of energy bridged the six-foot gap.

“Looking good so far,” said Coran. “I’m going to head up to the bridge, run a few tests. Stay here and tell me if anything goes wrong.”

“Is that safe?”

“Of course it is!” Coran paused, then keyed in a command on the control panel. A translucent spherical barrier shimmered into being around the engine, and Coran flashed Hunk a grin. “You probably won’t even need this.”

Hunk smiled weakly. “If you say so...”

With a jaunty wave, Coran headed back up the catwalk and out the door. For several minutes, Hunk stood alone by the controls, staring at the engine. If he died doing routine maintenance on an alien spaceship…

Eventually, a screen flickered to life over the control panel. Coran was visible on the screen, standing at the bank of monitors on the bridge. “Hunk, do you read me?”

“Loud and clear. How’s it looking?”

“All good so far.” Coran’s hands flew across his screens, his eyes darting from one display to the next. “Power levels normal, temperature normal, quintessence fluctuating within normal bounds. Crystal...” He glanced over his shoulder toward the door and the giant crystal suspended over the bridge. “Healthy.”

Hunk wondered if he’d heard that right. “ _Healthy_?”

Coran raised an eyebrow. “You’d rather have an unhealthy crystal?” His eyes drifted back toward the doors. “Ah! Pidge and Matt must have returned.”

“Already?” Hunk asked. “That was quick.”

“We did fix an entire Class Two engine,” Coran pointed out. “And anyway, Rover’s here checking...out...” Suddenly Coran’s face paled. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Hunk leaned forward, as if that would let him see what Coran was looking at. “What’s going--”

Before he could finish, a flash of white light filled the screen. Hunk felt the explosion all the way down in the engine room, the catwalk bucking underfoot. He latched onto the control panel to stay upright.

“Coran!” he yelled, even before the tremors had subsided. The screen showed him the bridge, dimly lit and choked with black smoke. Coran was nowhere to be seen. “Are you there? Coran! Answer me, come on. Coran!”

There was no response.

* * *

It sounded to Lance like the Arusians were setting off fireworks to honor their new heroes, which would have been a pretty sweet deal, all things considered. It might even have made up for the disgusting spinach-flavored everything that they’d made for the feast.

The only problem? The Arusians didn’t have fireworks.

The villagers all froze in perfect unison, then turned slowly toward the source of the noise. Lance followed their gaze and spotted a column of dark smoke rising from the bluff over the lake.

No.

Rising from the _castle_ on the bluff over the lake.

The plate of Arusian food fell from Lance’s hand, but he was already running, shouting for Allura. Around him, the village descended into chaos, everyone screaming about monsters and omens and the end of the world. A good paladin would have tried to calm them down.

Lance was too busy panicking over the fact that the Castle of Lions had just exploded with Hunk inside.

_You’d better not be dead, Hunk. If you died and left me out here in space all alone, I’m going to kill you._

“Allura!”

“Lance, over here!”

He found her corralling Arusians with one hand, the other pressed against the side of her helmet. Right, the comms. Lance shoved his helmet on as Allura spoke. “Coran, come in. Hunk, come in. Is anyone there? What happened?”

Lance locked eyes with Allura over the stream of Arusians heading for a cave at the north end of town, probably the safest place around. Mouth dry and heart stuttering in his chest, Lance tried for a reassuring grin. “M-maybe they’re out of range.”

Allura’s frown deepened. “Coran. Hunk. Come _in_.”

“They could just...not have their comms on them. Engines are messy, right? Probably didn’t want to get grease on the earpiece. I mean, who would? Then you’ve got all this gunk in your ear and… yuck.”

“ _Coran. Hunk._ ” She was definitely ignoring him now. With one quick look around the village to make sure the Arusians were all safely gathered in the cave, she stepped up to the mouth of the cave. “Don’t worry. Lance and I are going to see what happened. Everything’s going to be all right.”

It was pretty impressive how confident she sounded, considering the moment she turned around she looked ready to crush her helmet into a little ball if it would make Hunk and Coran answer.

“Allura! Lance!”

Pidge’s voice crackled across the comms, startling Lance. “Pidge!”

“What happened?” Matt asked. “Where’s that smoke coming from?”

“The castle,” Allura said. She opened her mouth to say more, but words failed her.

Through the silence, a low rumble picked up, barely audible but still somehow ominous. Lance looked at Allura. “What’s that…?”

She didn’t answer his question, but the look on her face—something way less controlled than simple concern—was enough to tell Lance that things were bad. Allura spun in place, scanning the sky. “Matt, Pidge. How soon can you get to our location? Your lions should be able to track our suits--”

“Way ahead of you,” Pidge said. At the same moment, the Red and Green Lions crested the mountains. Seconds later, they touched down at the edge of the village, mouths opening as Lance and Allura sprinted toward them. Allura headed for the Red Lion, while Lance charged into Green and gripped the back of Pidge’s chair with both hands.

He hadn’t quite found his grip before Pidge took off, shooting toward the castle. Green was quick, but Red was faster, and Matt soon pulled ahead. Pidge leaned over the controls as though willing Green to speed up.

Lance adopted a wide stance, gripping a handle overhead to hold himself upright and squeezing Pidge’s shoulder.

They didn’t acknowledge the gesture, but they spoke in a low voice, barely audible. “Hunk’s still in there.”

Lance’s chest tightened. “Yeah.”

“This is probably a Galra attack.”

“Yeah.”

Matt’s voice came on over the comms, taut but confident. “We’re going to stop them. We’re going to rescue Hunk _and_ Coran.”

Pidge’s fingers drummed against the lion’s throttle as they pulled back, skimming nearly vertical along the face of the cliff toward the Castle of Lions. “Damn right we are.”

They were almost to the top when the castle’s shields went up. Or—no. Lance’s skin prickled with goosebumps as he stared at the barrier. Like the castle’s shield, it was translucent and tiled, like a spherical honeycomb. But this one was a deep violet color, flickering with red sparks. Pidge twisted the controls hard to the side, grunting with the effort of turning the Green Lion before they ran headfirst into the shield.

Above them, the Red Lion wasn’t so lucky. It had a split second warning, barely enough time to turn its head aside before it slammed into the barrier. Red electricity arced around its body, which hung suspended for a brief instant and then began to fall.

“Matt!” Pidge screamed, wheeling the Green Lion around. Its claws dug into the cliff face and kicked off, sending them plunging down after Red. Lance was tossed across the cockpit, shoulder slamming against a console, as Pidge twisted in midair to get underneath the other lion. They fired their boosters, slowing their descent, and Red hit Green’s back with the nails-on-chalkboard shriek of metal scraping metal. The ground loomed up beneath them, a wide expanse of green filling the viewscreen.

They weren’t going to stop in time.

Pidge fought against their controls, Green roared in defiance, and Lance? Lance closed his eyes and braced for a rough landing.

At the last moment, the Red Lion shifted, rolling off of Green’s back, boosters blazing. Both lions landed hard, side-by-side on the plains surrounding the still blue lake. Lance’s teeth jarred at the impact, and he landed in a heap on the floor, bones aching—but he was alive, and there was only one alarm blaring on Pidge’s dashboard. They glanced at it, then swiped the warning message away.

“Matt,” they said breathlessly. “Allura. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Matt grunted. “Thanks for the save.”

Pidge grinned, and Lance flashed a thumbs-up in their direction. “Pretty spiffy flying, Gunderson.”

“Oh, no,” Allura breathed, her tone freezing the warm glow of relief in Lance’s throat. “Paladins! _Fly_!”

“What?” Lance asked, even as Pidge urged Green skyward. Lance fell hard against an access hatch, grunting. “What’s happening?”

It was Matt who answered, his voice strained. “The castle. It’s taking off.”

Lance clambered back to Pidge’s chair, staring out the viewscreen in horror. Matt was right. High above them, the Castle of Lions was moving. Chunks of earth and stone fell away as it separated from the cliff, the bridges, the ruins, everything. New shield panels appeared where the existing shield rose above the ground, until the shield made a complete sphere around the castle.

Even the castle itself looked warped, its spires glowing red and violet, jets of blue-white energy bursting from its base. The Red and Green Lions gained on it at first, clearing the cliff, then closing in on the underside of the shield.

Then the engines kicked in and the castle shot upward, a white-hot corona blossoming around it as it tore through the atmosphere.

“Hurry up, guys!” Lance cried, digging his nails into Pidge’s seat. Not being at the Blue Lion’s controls, not being able to do _anything_ but watch as the castle pulled away, Hunk trapped inside—it was the worst torture Lance had ever experienced. Pidge said something, the Red Lion pulled steadily ahead of the Green, but Lance barely noticed any of it.

The Galra had Hunk, and there was nothing Lance could do about it.

* * *

Arus fell away below the Castle of Lions, and Sendak stood on the bridge, burning with pride. He’d lost his ship, his soldiers, his weapons—everything he had except Lieutenant Haxus, three sentries, and a drone equipped with a small detonator.

And, of course, the crystal he’d cut out of the corpse of his warship.

That crystal now sat behind him, filling the bridge with dim violet light, bypassing the Alteans’ safety overrides that kept foreigners from accessing the defenses, engines, or wormhole generator. The shattered remains of the Altean crystal, which had been destroyed by Sendak’s drone, littered the floor around him.

To the side, the three sentries stood guard over the unconscious Altean man. A pitiful specimen, but Sendak looked forward to watching him bleed in the Arena just as soon as Zarkon granted Sendak a new warship. He would stand second only to Zarkon himself after this. The Castle of Lions flew under Sendak’s command. And inside it, one Altean, one paladin, and three lions.

It would have been better with all five lions in his grasp, but the Red and Green Lions seemed ready to fly into any ambush in the vain hope of saving their comrades.

 _Fools_.

“Haxus,” Sendak said, smiling to himself. “Contact Lord Zarkon. I wish to inform him of our success.”

Haxus murmured an affirmative and began the process of establishing a link to Zarkon’s ship. It would take several moments, in a jury-rigged setup like this one, but Sendak didn’t mind the wait. He’d done what no one in the history of Zarkon’s empire had managed, and he’d done it with virtually no assets. In one day, he’d secured his place in the empire and in the history of the Galra conquest.

The Galra princes would learn to fear him.

* * *

“ _This channel is not secured, Sendak._ ”

Shiro just about had a heart attack as Zarkon’s voice erupted through the shuttle’s communications panel, impossibly close and entirely too familiar. He and Keith had just emerged from another wormhole, their seventh, and Keith looked almost as startled as Shiro.

“ _My apologies, Lord Zarkon. Our options are limited on the Altean vessel. But I assure you, there is no one in this sector who could pose a threat, even if they did intercept this transmission._ ”

“What is this?” Shiro whispered. He didn’t know if Zarkon and Sendak would be able to receive transmissions from the shuttle, but he didn’t want to risk it.

Keith checked the communications display and frowned. “Unsecured transmission. It’s coming from nearby. Not a Galra ship, though.”

“No.” Shiro turned to the scanners to look for ships in the area. “Sendak said it was an Altean vessel.”

“You think they found fugitives and captured their ship? No, wait.” Keith shook his head irritably. “There’s no reason to transmit from a captured ship.”

There was one ship on the scanners, some way off. It was a fairly large ship, though not as large as a Galra warship. It gave off no ID signal, and the shuttle’s limited archives offered no information beyond its size and location. “So the real question is, what happened to the _Predator_?”

“ _Then you have taken the castle?_ ” Zarkon asked over the comms.

“ _Yes, sir. And with it, three of the lions and one paladin._ ”

Keith froze, sucking in a sharp breath.

Shiro frowned at him. “What’s--?”

“Shh!”

“ _And the other two?”_

“ _Following behind us. They can’t get through the shields, but if we set up an ambush at the end of a wormhole, they’ll follow us right into your clutches, and then Voltron will be at your disposal. I’m certain of it.”_

“Shit.”

Keith’s ears lay flat against his head, his eyes wide as he twisted the controls, wheeling the shuttle around. He gunned it, and the ship lurched forward.

Shiro clutched at his seat. “What? What’s happening? Keith, what are you _doing_?”

“Stopping Sendak.”

“What? _Why?_ What about the _Herald_? What about saving Earth? If we fight Sendak, that’s going to blow our cover!”

In answer, Keith only sped up, the shuttle’s engines groaning under the stress. He swore softly but fervently under his breath.

“ _Congratulations, Commander Sendak. You have done well. I’ll arrange your ambush. Open a wormhole to these coordinates in_ _one half count_ _._ ”

“ _Consider it done, my lord. Vrepit sa.”_

The transmission cut off, leaving silence in the shuttle except for Keith’s litany of curses.

“ _Keith_ ,” Shiro said firmly. “Tell me what’s going on. What is Voltron?”

Keith tensed and shot him a look of scarcely contained terror. “Voltron is the single most powerful weapon in the universe. They say Voltron single-handedly held Zarkon at bay in the early days of the war. His reign truly began the day he captured the Red Lion.”

A weapon? And an impossibly powerful one at that. Shiro frowned as he stared out the viewscreen at the empty space around them. Somewhere ahead was Sendak in his stolen ship. Somewhere ahead was a weapon that might save Earth. “What’s it doing out here?”

“I don’t know.” Keith hesitated for only a moment. Then, with a deep breath, he strengthened his resolve. “What I do know is that Zarkon can’t be allowed to get his hands on Voltron. If he does, then nothing we do here or on the front lines will matter. Nothing short of Zarkon’s entire army can stand against Voltron.”

“And no one but us has a chance to stop it,” Shiro finished. He swallowed, heart in his throat. “All right, then. I guess we’re gonna have to be heroes.”

Keith grinned just as the Altean ship came into view on their screen. “We can appreciate the irony later. Right now we’ve got...” He checked the console. “About twenty Earth minutes to stop Sendak from opening that wormhole.”

“Plenty of time,” Shiro said.

Keith chuckled dryly and coaxed a little more power out of the engines. “Let’s do this.”


	9. No Turning Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Lance and Allura paid a visit to the Arusians while Matt and Pidge dug out the robeast's crystal to power Sendak's computers. Meanwhile Sendak snuck into the castle and took flight, Coran and Hunk trapped inside. Keith and Shiro intercepted a transmission and changed course to help the paladins retake their ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor trigger warning for a panic attack at the start of this chapter. The worst of it happens off screen, but you can jump down to "The first thing to do was gather information" if you need to.

Time seemed to have stopped inside the Castle of Lions.

The engine thrummed steadily beside Hunk, brilliant white light refracting through the translucent barrier. The video link to the bridge had been severed, and the lights had dimmed to a faint bluish hue, painting the room in stark white and shifting black as the engine churned within its shell.

Hunk had somehow gotten himself over to the stack of crates by the railing, though he couldn’t remember moving. His throat was dry and raw, his head pounding with a million thoughts. There had been an explosion. Coran was missing—injured or maybe dead. The others had all been outside the castle—thank God—but that meant that Hunk was in here alone with the Galra. (He assumed this was a Galra attack. He doubted the Arusians had done it, unless they were secretly evil, and wouldn’t _that_ just be the cherry on top of this living hell?)

He didn’t remember how long the engine had been running. He’d thought at first that it was going to explode, too, but that worry had mostly faded by now. But with the engine running this hot for some unknown length of time, odds were good that the castle was airborne.

Had the others made it on board? Were they chasing the ship down? Had they been attacked, too? How far from Arus had they gotten? If someone had opened a wormhole, they could be anywhere by now, but could the Galra open a wormhole using the castle’s equipment?

He didn’t know.

He didn’t know _anything_ , except that there had been an attack and Coran was in danger. He’d been too busy panicking to figure out anything else. (He’d had a good reason to panic, though, or so he tried to convince himself, but it was hard not to feel guilty when he’d spent precious minutes with his head in his hands, hyperventilating as doomsday played out in his imagination.)

Now it was hard to say which vice was tighter around his chest, the anxiety or the shame. The panic attack had hit so hard and so fast he’d swallowed one of his emergency Ativan without pausing to consider his severely limited supply, so now things didn’t seem quite so overwhelming. He could breathe, which was a start, and thinking about things other than death and dismemberment was getting easier. His hands still shook, though, and the itch between his shoulder blades telling him a Galra was going to shoot him in the back was as bad as ever.

It was like he’d jumped out of an airplane and the Ativan was a parachute. It was controlled chaos, panic held at arm’s length. It normally worked better than this, but then he normally wasn’t alone in an alien spaceship with enemies on board waiting to kill him. Being able to move, to plan, was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

He took a deep breath and thought of the ocean. _Respect the danger but don’t fear the waves_ . It was something his Uncle Eli had told him when Hunk was learning to surf. _If you let them control you, then you’ll spend the rest of your life on dry land._ _Master them, and you’ll learn to fly._

Respect the danger the Galra present, but don’t cower in fear. He was a paladin of Voltron; he couldn’t let his enemies knock him down just by showing up.

The first thing to do was gather information. He crossed to the control panel by the engines and scoured the readouts. His hands shook as he navigated the menu, and his mind still felt oddly detached from his body, like none of this was actually happening to him. It was just a dream, or a movie. He’d wake up back in the Garrison, tell Lance about it over breakfast, and laugh it all off.

Yeah, right.

The castle’s computers displayed everything in Altean, but Coran had walked Hunk through the basic diagnostics, which was enough to make a guess at what had happened. The explosion had temporarily knocked out power, and when it had been restored many of the security overrides had been disabled. Several of the core systems’ data now displayed in an unfamiliar language, probably Galran.

Not that it mattered. One alien language was as much gibberish as the next when all you had was a tiny bit of alien translation software to give you a nudge in the right direction.

At least there were plenty of graphs, gauges, and diagrams.

“Shields are up,” Hunk muttered to himself as he flipped from one menu to the next. Talking helped—hearing his voice, shaky as it was, grounded him, reminded him he was doing something useful. “Engines at full power, weapons systems offline—that’s good, at least. I think.”

Three of the lions were in their hangars, the doors sealed. Which meant Matt and Pidge, with their lions, were still outside. That was both good and bad news. Good news: they hadn’t all be captured. Bad news: they couldn’t offer backup in here.

Hunk couldn’t see the navigational data from here, either because the engineers didn’t have access to it in the first place or because whoever had taken the ship had locked it down. Still, the ship monitored interior, exterior, and core temperatures. Hunk couldn’t convert the numbers to Fahrenheit or Celsius—actually, he wasn’t one hundred percent confident he even remembered Altean numerals right—but it didn’t matter. The exterior temperature was three digits in the negative. Whatever the scale, that had to mean outer space.

So they had left Arus. There was no sign Hunk could see that the castle had generated a wormhole (yet), so unless the Galra had opened one of their own (always a possibility), they were probably still relatively close to Arus (and therefore to help.)

 _There we go then,_ Hunk thought, turning a circle until he spotted the toolbox hovering aimlessly over the catwalk. _At least now I’ve got a goal: shut down these engines before I wind up on the Galra homeworld._

He could manage that much, at least.

* * *

“It’s not working,” Pidge said, letting up on Green’s lasers. The castle-ship’s shield rippled violet where they’d hit, then smoothed out. It was just taunting them at this point.

“You’re just not trying hard enough.” Lance leaned over their shoulder and hit the button that fired an energy torpedo from Green’s tail. Pidge smacked his hand away.

They dove beneath the ship, trying again from another angle. “I _am_ trying, Lance. I want to get in there as bad as you do.” If there was one bight spot in this whole mess, it was that the lions were faster and more nimble than the castle now that the castle had switched over to to its deep space engines, which demanded less power from the engines than the launch boosters.

Lance started to say something—probably his instinctual urge to be contrary—but he stopped himself, sagging against the back of Pidge’s seat. “I know,” he groaned. “Sorry, I’m just--”

“Yeah,” Pidge said.

“It’s _Hunk_.”

“I know.”

“He’s my best friend.”

Pidge reached back and patted his arm. “We’re gonna get in there, somehow.”

Lance sighed heavily. “I don’t like not being able to _help_.”

“I know how you feel, Lance,” Allura said gently. “But you mustn’t loose hope. Hunk and Coran are counting on us.”

“No luck reaching either of them, I take it?” Pidge asked.

Allura hesitated, which was answer enough.

“It could be the engines,” Matt pointed out. “They were doing repairs, right? If they’re still down near the engines, that might be interfering with their comm systems.”

It might have been more reassuring if he’d sounded more confident. Still, it was a reasonable explanation that didn’t involve any of their friends being dead, and Lance seemed to rally a little for hearing it.

The worst part was acting on so little information. They had no clue what was happening inside the castle, except for a brief message sent to both lions. It was from Sendak, who had apparently escaped his ship’s crash and taken control of the Castle of Lions. He’d proposed a trade—the Red and Green Lions for their friend inside the castle. _Friend._ Not friends.

No one wanted to think about the implications of that.

At Allura’s direction, Matt and Pidge circled back toward the front of the ship. She said the shields were weakest here, just above the spire that projected them. Matt and Pidge had already tried to break through here, with no luck, but aside from admitting defeat, there was nothing to do but keep chipping away until something gave.

The two lasers hit the shields simultaneously, so close together it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. The shields rippled and flashed momentarily red, only to settle back into placid transparency.

“This isn’t going to work,” Matt said, shooting forward and dragging Red’s claws along the surface of the shield. Bright white score marks chased him before they, too, disappeared. “These shields are meant to take a lot more damage than two lions can dish out.”

“So that’s it?” Lance demanded. “Sorry Hunk, sorry Coran. We tried. Guess you’re on your own now. Have fun in the Galra prisons!”

“That’s not what I’m saying!” Matt’s voice had taken on a brittle, bristling quality, and Pidge grabbed Lance to stop him from making things worse. In the corner of their screen, Pidge saw Allura do the same to Matt, who took a deep breath before speaking again. “No one said anything about abandoning them to the Galra. We just need to… come up with a better plan.”

“Like what, knock on the door?”

Pidge abandoned their lasers for a moment to check Green’s scanners. “It couldn’t hurt,” they pointed out. “Green’s not getting any hint of weakening in that shield. Matt’s right. We could hammer at this thing all day and not get through. Maybe we should take Sendak up on his offer.”

“No,” Allura said at once.

“I’m not saying we _actually_ give up the lions, but if it gets us on the ship? We’re useless out here. At least inside we’d stand a chance.”

Allura wasn’t convinced. “What if Sendak makes us leave the lions before he makes the trade? I cannot risk giving Zarkon all five lions, no matter the cost.”

What little calm Lance had managed to collect went flying out the garbage chute at that moment. “So you’ll kill them to protect your precious lions?”

“I won’t sacrifice the entire universe for two lives, even if those lives belong to my friends.”

“Friends?” Lance’s voice had gone low and dangerous. Pidge glanced at him nervously, but it was way too late to talk him down. They’d only ever seen him like this once, when some asshole of a pilot decided to pick on Hunk. That student had ended up in the infirmary with a broken arm. Lance had been suspended for three days, and had accepted his punishment with a savage grin.

Pidge wasn’t about to get in the way of Lance’s temper. They ducked their head and had Green run another scan on the castle-ship while Lance exploded at Allura.

“I’m doing what I have to do,” Allura said, struggling to maintain her calm. “A paladin’s duty is to more than just their friends.”

“You don’t get to call them friends,” Lance shot back. “Not when you’re the one telling me to abandon them.”

“I’m not--”

“You don’t want to take any risks! There is no safe answer here, Allura. We either take risks, or we watch them die. Those are the only options. If you don’t care enough to try, then you can just sit this one out.”

Allura grit her teeth, her hands balled into fists on the back of Matt’s chair. “I do care.”

“Well it sure doesn’t look like it from where I’m standing.”

“Coran is the only family I have left!” Allura’s voice broke on the last word, silencing Lance’s cutting retort. She closed her eyes, shaking with emotion. “I would sacrifice myself in a heartbeat if it would bring them back, but I _cannot_ in good conscience condemn the rest of the universe with a plan that will never work.” She stared hard at Lance, daring him to argue.

He didn’t.

Allura pressed her lips together in grim determination. “I’m not going to stop looking for a way in, but giving him the Red and Green Lions is _not_ an option.”

Uncomfortable silence filled the two lions. Pidge caught Matt’s eyes over the video feed, then quickly looked away. Lance slumped against Pidge’s chair, covering his face with both hands. His shaky breathing sounded inches away from sobs.

An alert beeped on Pidge’s dashboard as Green finished her scan.

“Guys,” Pidge breathed, scanning the results. Their heart leaped into their throat, and they let out a breathless laugh. “It stopped.”

“What?” Matt asked.

“The castle,” Pidge said. “It stopped. The engines are completely dead.”

The comms crackled for a moment, the grainy noise prickling Pidge’s frayed nerves. Their hands fluttered on the controls, and then the channel cleared.

“--idge? Pidge, is that you?”

Lance practically fell into Pidge’s lap out of sheer relief. “Hunk! Oh, _man_ , you don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.”

“Uh, yeah, no, I’ve definitely got a little bit of an idea.” Hunk paused, breathing hard. “Where...where are you guys?”

“Outside the castle,” Allura said. “Hunk, what happened? Where’s Coran?”

This time the pause was longer and decidedly more loaded. After a painfully long moment, Hunk sighed. “He was on the bridge. Said he wanted to test the engines. Then there was an explosion, or something, and I lost contact with him. I—I don’t know what happened to him.”

Pidge glanced at Allura, who looked ready to faint—or maybe tear Sendak’s head off. It was difficult to say which. “So you’re the one who stopped the ship?” Pidge asked. “Nice.”

The grin was evident in Hunk’s voice. “Come on, Pidge, give me a little credit. If I can fix something, I can sure as hell break it. I just figured it would probably be a good idea to keep this thing from getting any farther from the rest of you.”

“Good plan, buddy,” Lance said. “I didn’t want to have to rescue you from Zarkon’s backyard.”

Hunk’s laugh sounded less than amused. “Please don’t joke about that.” He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. All right. I’m heading to the bridge to try to figure out what’s going on.”

“Wait.” Allura pressed a hand to the side of her helmet. “You need to bring down the shields so the rest of us can get inside.”

Lance straightened up, Matt grinned, and Pidge bit back a cry of delight. Of _course_! They had someone on the inside now. That changed everything.

Hunk wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as the rest of them, but he certainly wasn’t arguing. “Just tell me where to go.”

* * *

Sendak pounded a fist on the control panel. “What happened? Why have we stopped?”

Haxus frantically searched the ship’s logs. “Engines down. It didn’t overload, sir. It just lost power.”

“Sabotage,” Sendak growled. The yellow paladin was smarter than he'd anticipated. An oversight on Sendak’s part, but not a fatal mistake, not so long as the shields remained in place. “Find him,” he ordered Haxus. “Bring me his body.”

* * *

Shiro tensed as they neared the Altean ship. The shield surrounding it was definitely powered by a Galra crystal, and it was strong enough that the two robot lions—Voltron lions, according to Keith—hovering near the bow couldn’t even come close to breaking through.

“Maybe I should have asked this before,” Shiro said as Keith piloted them straight toward the shield. “But do you have a plan?”

“Nope,” Keith said easily.

It wasn’t the answer Shiro had been hoping for.

“You do realize we’re heading for an energy barrier that could probably tear this ship to shreds.”

Keith flicked a wrist, but the shuttle’s course never wavered. “That’s a Galra shield. We’re in a Galra ship. With our credentials, we should pass right through.”

“ _Should_?” Shiro asked skeptically.

Keith only grinned.

The shuttle sped closer to the shield, and Shiro braced himself for a collision that never came. The shield parted for them, a round hole just large enough to pass through, and closed behind them just as seamlessly. Keith eased them in among the ship’s spires and docked at a set of hangar doors.

Once he’d powered the ship down, Keith glanced at Shiro. “Ready?”

 _I hope so_ , Shiro thought. “Let’s go.”

They unstrapped themselves, lowered the visors on their helmets, and made their way to the airlock. Wind howled around them for a moment as the airlock depressurized, atmosphere escaping where the Galra shuttle didn’t sit flush with the Altean ship. The ship, unlike the shield, was not of Galran design, so the doors remained closed against entry—but not for long.

Steeling himself, Shiro reached out to the dormant energy in his right arm. It stirred like a bear emerging from hibernation: hungry and implacable. It rumbled, coiled, and then surged through his arm, a flame of white heat burning from the inside out.

Shiro wedged his fingers in the crack of the Altean ship’s hangar doors, the metal instantly softening under his touch. With a few quick cuts, he’d broken the ship’s seal. Air hissed out through the molten seam as Shiro gripped the door with his prosthetic hand and heaved. His arm strained, his nerves screaming with the effort, but the door slowly inched open.

As soon as the opening was wide enough, Shiro braced one foot against the wall. Keith slid easily through underneath, and Shiro followed him into the hangar. The door slammed shut behind them, the melted edges making for an imperfect fit.

Warning lights flashed over the doors, but there was no air left to carry the blare of the depressurization alarm.

Shiro grimaced. “Let’s hope Sendak doesn’t decide to investigate that.”

“Nothing we can do if he does.” Keith put up a good show of indifference, but there was tension on his face as he made his way to the interior door. Shiro followed, unsettled by the eerie silence of the vacuum. The only sound was his own breath, echoing inside his helmet, and Keith’s, fainter, in his ear.

Another, weaker, gust of wind buffeted them as they darted through the door into the empty airlock beyond. As soon as the door closed behind them, the sound of pumps filled the room as the automatic pressurization cycle began. A moment later, the overhead light flashed blue, a chime sounded, and the far door slid open.

“Well,” Keith said with forced enthusiasm. “We’re in.”

Shiro gave him an unamused look and started down the corridor. “Look for a computer,” he said. “The best plan is to bring down the shields and let the paladins retake their ship themselves while we get as far away from Sendak as possible.”

“Right.”

* * *

 _Shield generator,_ Hunk thought, skidding around a corner.  _If I were a shield generator, where would I be?_

Allura said the northwest corner of the ninth floor, but (a) Hunk had no clue which direction northwest was in outer space, (b) whatever Sendak had done to take control of the castle was blocking Allura from accessing the maps or anything else that might let her guide him, and (c) the ninth floor was freaking _huge_.

He’d been searching for three or four minutes so far, bayard in hand just in case the worst happened—because, hey, with his luck it would—but no luck. There was nothing on the ninth floor but storage rooms, computer banks to run the critical systems, and a few access tunnels to the pipes, wires, and tubes that ran through the castle’s walls.

None of it was going to help Hunk get the others in here to help.

“Are you sure you sent me to the right place?” he asked as he opened yet another door to find yet another pile of junk. “Because I don’t see any shield generators.”

“Are you on the ninth floor?” Allura asked. Her temper was running short, though Hunk couldn’t really blame her for that. He should have had these shields down ages ago.

Of course, understanding Allura’s frustration didn’t mean that he couldn’t be equally on edge. “I don’t know! I don’t read Altean! I think that was a nine on the door, and _you_ said I was in the right spot.”

“Okay, both of you, take a deep breath,” Matt said. “Panic isn’t going to solve anything.”

“Easy for you to say.” Hunk turned a corner into a dead end, groaning, and headed back the way he’d come. “You’re not the ones stuck in here with a bunch of bloodthirsty Galra.”

“Put your hand on the wall—isn’t that how you’re supposed to solve mazes?” Lance was probably the only one of them not panicking—at least outwardly. Hunk knew him well enough to guess that his cheery comments were just an act. Still, Hunk appreciated that he was trying to lighten the mood.

Honestly, he was ready to try just about anything—putting his hand on the wall, tying a string to a doorknob, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.

It wouldn’t _help_ , but it might make him feel better.

When he turned the next corner to a hail of laser blasts, all thoughts of breadcrumbs ran for cover. Hunk would have, too, if he’d been a little lighter on his feet. Instead, he summoned his shield and shrank down behind it as he tried to swallow his pounding heart and figure out who was shooting at him.

“What was that?” Pidge asked. “Were those lasers?”

There were two robots, roughly Galra-shaped and at least a foot taller than Hunk, at the end of the hallway. Each held a hefty rifle that could probably take Hunk’s head off in one shot.

“Hunk?” Allura asked, an edge of worry to her voice. That was nice. Worrying about him. He’d be feeling really loved and supported right now if he wasn’t one wrong move away from dying. “What’s happening? Talk to us.”

“Well,” Hunk said slowly, wincing as a fresh round of laser blasts hit his shield. “It could be worse.”

Lance gave a strangled cry. “That’s not an answer.”

Before Hunk could elaborate, there was a sound from behind. He turned his head, yelped, and dove to the side just as a slender, mean-looking Galra lunged toward him with a giant glowing purple sword.

“Hunk!”

The robots fired again, and Hunk stumbled back, abandoning his shield in favor of his bayard. The best defense, he figured, was not having anyone shooting at him.

The canon still had as much kickback as ever, but that didn’t matter so much considering the Galra had Hunk backed up against a wall. He opened fire, barely even worrying about aim, and kept the pressure on the trigger until the Galra and one of the robots retreated around the nearest corner in opposite directions.

The other robot wasn’t fast enough and went down, twitching and sparking where Hunk’s laser barrage had bit into its midsection.

The others were still yelling in Hunk’s ears, which would have been distracting if Hunk had had the presence of mind to think about anything beyond the gun and the sword competing to draw first blood. Still, he should probably let them know he wasn’t dead yet.

“Hey, uh, guys? Slight problem.”

“What is it?” Lance asked, his words tripping over each other in their rush to get out. “What’s wrong?”

Hunk fired off another quick burst toward the Galra, hoping that would keep him cautious for a few more seconds, then sprinted toward the remaining robot.

“Nothing. Just dealing with a few purple assholes. It’s fine.” He sucked in a breath as the robot sprang out, straight into Hunk’s path, and opened fire. He slammed against the wall, letting his bayard revert to its inactive state as he brought up his shield. “But I’m not going to be able to talk for a minute here, so, uh. Don’t panic, and I guess you’ll know if I manage to find the shields.”

Warning prickled at the back of his mind, and he turned just in time to see the Galra dashing toward him.

 _Great_.

Well, playing it safe sure wasn’t working for him. Time to try Lance’s favorite strategy: all out recklessness. If nothing else, he might make the Galra laugh so hard he pissed himself and gave Hunk an opening.

It was better than breadcrumbs.

* * *

Several agonizing minutes passed, during which Lance was once again relegated to the ‘stand by and watch quietly’ squad. Sounds of battle came over the comms, but only faintly. Indistinct laser fire, grunts, heavy breathing. Occasionally Hunk would cry out in fear or pain and, once, triumph.

“Hey, Pidge?” Lance whispered, tapping the side of his helmet to mute his microphone.

Pidge glanced at him as they circled the ship. “Yeah?”

“Remind me when we get through this to ask you to put cameras in our helmets. I can’t stand not being able to tell what’s going on in there.”

For a moment, Pidge was silent. Then they reached up to silence their mic, let Green coast along beside the castle-ship, and twisted in their seat to give Lance a hug. It was awkward, what with the height difference and the chair in between them, but it was more than welcome. Lance squeezed Pidge and forced a smile.

“This is Hunk we’re talking about,” they whispered in Lance’s ear. “You’ve gotta have a little faith.”

They were right. And Lance did have faith in Hunk—probably more faith than Hunk had in himself. In the nearly three years they’d been friends, Lance had come to appreciate all the amazing things Hunk had to offer. His cooking, his mechanical expertise, the way he always seemed to know when Lance needed a hug.

He was smart, he was strong, and he never gave up. Sometimes Hunk couldn’t see that, when his anxiety was messing with his head, but that was why he had Lance.

Shoving his own worries aside, Lance pulled away from Pidge and unmuted his mic. “You’ve got this, Hunk,” he said firmly. “No way a couple of Galra jerkwads are gonna get the best of you—you’re way too smart!”

“Yeah,” Pidge added, taking up their controls once more. “Go show those purple assholes what you’re made of.”

Lance didn’t know if Hunk could hear them over the laserfire, or if he was even paying attention, but he didn’t let up. He didn’t have Blue here to pilot, he didn’t have Galra to shoot, but he could do this. He could remind Hunk he wasn’t alone, and that he was a million times better than any one of Sendak’s soldiers.

Suddenly Hunk let out a breathless cheer over the comms. The sounds of battle resumed almost instantly, but a brief moment later the shields flickered and dissolved.

Lance gave a whoop. “He did it! They’re down!”

Allura and Matt cheered, and Pidge led the way to the castle-ship’s hull. Green roared a challenge, and the doors to the central hangar slid open to receive them. Both lions touched down in the open chamber outside the annex where the Black Lion had stood for ten thousand years. It wasn’t there now, of course. All the lions stayed in the smaller hangers in the castle’s spires, which were easier to reach from the bridge.

But they weren’t going through the bridge now. Not yet. Hunk came first, and Hunk was much closer to this hangars than the others.

Lance was the first off the lion, the others close behind him. All four of them sprinted across the hangar to the elevator, where Lance hammered the button for the ninth floor. “Hang on, buddy,” he told Hunk over the comms. “We’re on our way.”

* * *

Sendak watched in horror as the shields disarmed themselves.

“No,” he growled, though it was now only him, the unconscious Altean, and a single sentry on the bridge. “How?”

He magnified the camera feed, seething. The yellow paladin was still locked in combat with Haxus on the ninth floor, a considerable distance from the shield generators. The human had managed to destroy both sentries, but he was no match for a Galra duelist of Haxus’s caliber. He would be dead soon.

Sendak had monitored the fight the whole time; the paladin hadn’t had a chance to find the shield generators, let alone deactivate them. So how…?

He swiped the video feed to the side and it zipped away, hovering meekly at the edge of his sight. A few keystrokes brought up a new feed, this one showing the shield generators themselves. They were dark, of course, now that they’d been powered down, but…

Shadows flickered at the edge of the frame, heading deeper into the ship. Sendak selected cameras along their path and scanned each feed quickly until he saw them—two figures, armored, sprinting down the ship’s corridor toward the central spire, where much of the crucial equipment was housed.

Sendak knew those figures.

He let out a roar and raised his robotic arm over his head, bringing it down on the console and shattering the flimsy Altean casing. The screens fuzzed and vanished.

Fuming, Sendak turned toward the door. “Stay here,” he ordered the last sentry. “If anyone besides Haxus or myself enters the bridge, kill the prisoner.”

* * *

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Shiro demanded, following Keith at a run down the corridor.

“Positive,” Keith said.

Shiro doubted that very much, considering Keith had spent less than a minute studying the ship’s blueprints, but he knew arguing wouldn’t win him any points. So he tried a different tack. “I thought the plan was to leave. We brought the shields down, now let’s _go_. The paladins can handle this.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that if we stay here much longer, Orgul’s going to start asking questions.”

Keith scoffed. “Blame it on that shitty transport Tarrok gave us. It broke down after one of the jumps and we had to stop for repairs.”

Something told Shiro it wouldn’t be that easy, not where Galra were involved—and _especially_ not where Shiro was involved. He may have passed Haggar’s test, but he held no delusions about having convinced his captors he was an obedient soldier. He couldn’t afford to give them any room for doubt.

As it turned out, Keith’s sense of direction wasn’t merely overconfidence. He navigated the Altean ship quickly and effortlessly, and within moments they stopped at a door marked with Altean letters and a yellow-and-black striped bar that screamed _Danger_ in a universal language.

Keith gave a smug little chuckle. “Told you. The wormhole generator.”

Rather than give Keith a chance to gloat, Shiro slapped the panel on the wall. The door retracted, revealing a small room with an egg-shaped device suspended in a bluish energy stream at the center. Sendak stood beside it, waiting.

Keith and Shiro froze in the door. Keith’s hand went to the dagger at his waist and Shiro dropped into a crouch, his Galra arm thrumming in anticipation of a fight.

“Well, well,” Sendak growled, his lips parting in a predator’s grin. “It seems I’ve caught myself a pair of traitors. Lord Zarkon won’t be happy.”

“Sendak,” Keith growled.

A hundred lies flashed through Shiro’s mind. None were particularly convincing, but they offered at least a slim chance of leaving here without being exposed. They’d intercepted a transmission from the Voltron paladins and decided to try to capture them. They’d seen laser fire and assumed the worst. Their wormhole had opened nearby and they decided to investigate.

Shiro knew Keith wasn’t thinking of any of that. He needed time to prepare his lies; put him on the spot and he was much more likely to tell the truth—or lash out before anyone else could strike first. Judging by his expression, he was about thirty seconds away from the latter.

Part of Shiro was glad for that, an equal part ashamed. After nine months fighting in the Arena, he was thirsty for a chance to put his new skill to use against Sendak.

Sendak’s stance was loose and relaxed, like he was in the middle of a casual conversation and not about to pick a fight. His lip curled into a snarl. “It’s a mercy your father isn’t here to see you throw away his legacy.”

“My father was as much a bastard as you.”

Sendak actually laughed at that, the sound echoing in the empty chamber. “I always knew the Lotor Princedom would end with you, though I’ll admit I never would have guessed you would let yourself be controlled by a _human_ like this.”

Keith bristled, his fingers dancing on the hilt of his dagger. “Humans aren’t nearly as weak as you seem to think.”

Laughing derisively, Sendak turned his eyes to Shiro, who tensed, his Galra arm activating with a shock of heat, followed by numbness.

“If you think _that_ is strength, it’s a wonder you survived your Proof.”

 _Proof_? Shiro wondered, but he didn’t have time to ask what it meant.

With a shout that seemed ripped from his throat, Keith charged at Sendak, dagger low and angled toward Sendak’s gut.

Sendak grinned, his oversized mechanical arm snaking out to snatch Keith up before he came within striking distance. Shiro ran to help, but before he’d taken two steps Sendak flung Keith at him. On instinct, he deactivated his arm, and it went cold a split second before Keith crashed into him. They landed in a tangle of limbs, Keith’s dagger spinning away and coming to a rest near the door.

Sendak’s laughter set Shiro’s teeth on edge. “Pathetic. You should have run when you had the chance.”

Keith was on his feet an instant later, a sword appearing in his hand seemingly from nowhere. Shiro didn’t recognize the blade, a shorter weapon than what other Galra officers used. It was double-edged, compact, and glowing with the vibrant purple light of Quintessence.

Shiro had never seen it before, but Sendak’s grin widened at the sight of it.

“Well, now,” Sendak said. “Maybe this will be interesting after all.”

* * *

Hunk wasn’t doing well. He had, somehow, managed to pick off the second robot, but the Galra was quite a bit stronger. You’d think the guy with the actual laser cannon would have the edge in battle, but the Galra was quick and smart and kept getting up in Hunk’s personal space with his nasty looking magenta sword.

And see, that was the thing: The Galra was very obviously a soldier. He had the skill, he had the guts, he had the mercilessness.

Hunk? Not so much. He ran as much as he fought, and when he fought he mostly missed. Aside from a lucky shot that grazed the Galra’s arm, Hunk hadn’t done anything more impressive than shoot up the corridor. (Man, Allura was going to _kill_ him for making a mess of her castle.)

The others’ voices chattered in his ear, sometimes worried, sometimes encouraging, sometimes soft and heated. None of the words made it through to Hunk’s consciousness, just buzzEd in a way he found weirdly comforting because it reminded him that there might possibly eventually be backup. If he could ever find his way to the shield generator, though, considering that had been impossible _before_ the Galra attacked, Hunk wasn’t holding out much hope of getting there now.

Not that he wasn’t trying. He had to run anyway, and he checked rooms as he got the chance, just in case.

Unfortunately, he was tiring much faster than his opponent. If this kept up, he was going to get pinned down, and then he’d be dead, and the others would have no way into the castle, and the Galra would make off with three of the lions, and Zarkon would win the war for the entire universe. Then every time someone said the name Hunk everyone in the room would say, _Oh. You mean that_ _guy_ _who lost the war._

The Galra charged again. Hunk retreated—and found himself backed against the wall. He raised his cannon, but the Galra kicked it away and raised his sword.

“ _Hunk!_ ”

The cry echoed oddly, and it took Hunk a moment to realize that was because he was hearing it once on the comms and once in person. The significance of that fact only registered after a flash of lasers, when the Galra in front of Hunk was replaced with a very familiar figure in blue.

“Lance?”

Lance—and it _was_ Lance, somehow, miraculously, impossibly—hefted his bayard and fired off another three shots at the Galra, grinding vindictively. “Take that, ya big ugly eggplant! I’ll teach you not to mess with Team Voltron!”

The Galra leaped nimbly back, avoiding Lance’s shots. But he wasn’t fast enough to avoid Allura, who had snuck up behind him while he was dealing with Lance. As the Galra started to turn, she punched him, sending him stumbling back, right into Pidge’s path. They struck lightning fast with their bayard, electrocuting him. Two more laser blasts caught him in the shoulder, these ones courtesy of Matt.

The Galra tried to regain his bearings, even managed to raise his sword as Allura charged in again. She ducked gracefully under it, pivoted, and cracked her heel against his temple.

And just like that, it was over. The Galra dropped, boneless. Pidge, Matt, and Allura gathered around him, wary, looking a little uncertain what they should do with the unconscious Galra that had just dropped in their laps. Lance, meanwhile, turned to Hunk.

“Hunk! Buddy!” He seized Hunk’s face in his hands and looked him over. “Are you okay? Holy shit!”

Hunk laughed, a watery sort of sound accompanied by more than a few tears, and grabbed Lance in a crushing bear hug. “Lance! You’re—what? _How_?”

Lance pulled back, arching an eyebrow. “How _what_?”

“How’d you get in?”

Matt turned, frowning. “You mean you didn’t deactivate the shields?”

“I was too busy trying not to die.” Hunk looked around at the others. Pidge was still scowling at the Galra, but everyone else looked at him in varying degrees of confusion.

“Hang on...” Lance held up a hand. “If you didn’t deactivate the shields...who did?”

No one had an answer for that. They stared at each other, bayards held loosely at their sides, glancing occasionally at the Galra lying between Pidge and Allura. Pidge opened their mouth once, then closed it without saying anything.

“It doesn’t matter,” Allura finally said, her voice firm. “We need to get to the bridge, save Coran, and stop Sendak.”

“Right,” said Pidge. “Rover, stay here and keep an eye on our prisoner. If he wakes up, zap him.”

Rover beeped an acknowledgment. A metal wand popped out from its underbelly and spat a few sparks as though to warn the unconscious Galra about the fate that awaited him.

Matt stared at Pidge, one eyebrow raised, until they said, “What? I was bored, so I gave Rover a taser.”

“I’m not complaining,” Matt said quickly. “I’m just wondering when you found the time.”

Lance scoffed. “Please. You think Pidge sleeps like us mortals? Ha! Ha, I say!”

Pidge laughed, Allura tossed the Galra into a storage closet with Rover hovering nearby, and Hunk pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. He sagged against the wall, knees weak with relief, but didn’t have long to rest before everyone took off at a sprint for the elevator.

* * *

Keith fought with a reckless, furious edge that, frankly, had Shiro worried. Even with the energy sword he’d revealed, he was a poor match for Sendak’s larger frame and greater reach. Keith may have been faster, but he wasn’t fast enough to get through Sendak’s defenses.

Shiro tried to take a more cautious approach, hanging back and covering the holes in Keith’s defenses. It didn’t do either of them much good. One sweep of Sendak’s massive arm separated them. Sendak backed Keith down the corridor away from the wormhole generator, and Shiro had to chase them, unable to rejoin Keith with Sendak’s bulk filling the corridor.

_Maybe if you stopped holding back, Champion._

The voice in his mind sounded suspiciously like Haggar’s, and Shiro shivered, his hesitation giving Sendak a chance to broadside him, flinging him ten feet back down the corridor. Shiro landed hard, winded and too weak to stand. His Galra arm throbbed with pain and bloodlust.

He knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. He was Champion, he was Unit One. As long as he kept up his cover in the Galra army, he would have to fight, and Haggar wouldn’t let her precious experiment use a lesser weapon than the one she’d grafted onto his body. If he kept hesitating like this, he was going to wind up dead.

Still, the thought of accepting Haggar’s gift, embracing it as a part of him, turned his stomach. He was already one of Zarkon’s soldiers, going to the front lines to fight for the Galra army. If he started to fight like them, like Sendak, then how many more compromises would he make? And how long would he last before he became a monster?

Keith’s shout of pain dragged Shiro out of his own dark thoughts and he scrambled to his feet, searching for the cause of Keith’s cry.

Sendak had him pinned against a set of doors at the end of the hall, his massive mechanical hand pressing Keith’s body into the metal until the doors began to buckle. Keith’s face was twisted with pain, but he glared defiantly at Sendak. It was obvious sheer stubbornness was the only thing keeping him silent.

Shiro’s blood burned, raging within him until he couldn’t distinguish between the heat of his arm and the heat of his anger. Moving on silent feet, he sprinted toward Sendak and Keith, his arm held out to his side. He felt something shift inside it, and it moved like a striking serpent, faster than any human could have moved, slicing down toward Sendak’s back.

At the last instant, Sendak spun, Keith still clutched in his fist, and knocked Shiro backward. Then he whipped Keith forward again, slamming him into the dented doors—and in fact, straight _though_ them into what looked like an empty elevator shaft.

“Keith!” Shiro struggled to his feet, his eyes locking with Keith’s for just an instant.

Sendak let go.

Keith cried out once as he fell, his voice drowned out by Shiro’s. Moving on instinct, Shiro charged forward, dropping to his knees to skid underneath Sendak’s arm as it swung for his head. Shiro made no attempt to slow himself as he approached the mangled doors, just pushed himself to his feet and leaped through the hole after Keith.

He had a split second to take in the situation—Keith, twenty feet below, plunging his sword into the wall of the elevator shaft in an attempt to slow his fall. Time seemed to stop as, for a moment, Shiro thought Keith would catch himself. Then his full weight fell on the hand wrapped around his sword’s hilt and he lost his grip, eyes going wide as he strained upward toward his sword. His groping hand closed on empty air.

He was falling again, but he’d slowed himself just enough for Shiro to catch up. He saw the elevator car looming below them as he wrapped his human arm around Keith’s waist and slammed the other into the wall.

The seam between flesh and Galra tech burned, and for a moment Shiro thought the connections might fail, his prosthetic arm rip itself off his body. But it held, and Shiro cut a molten trench in the wall as their descent slowed. Keith’s claws dug into Shiro’s back, piercing the fabric between pieces of armor. Shiro clenched his teeth against the pain in his back and in his arm, and held on until they slowed to a stop just a few feet above the elevator.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Shiro lowered Keith to the roof of the elevator, then joined him on the domed surface. A second later the deactivated hilt of Keith’s sword hit the elevator with a hollow _clang_. Keith grabbed it, then fell back against the wall, shaking.

“Thanks,” he said weakly, smiling at Shiro.

“Don’t mention it.”

They didn’t have time to say anything more, as Sendak dropped down after them, landing with enough force to collapse the roof of the elevator car. Keith and Shiro staggered, then dropped into the elevator with Sendak, who threw off the rubble that had fallen on top of him.

Shiro spotted the panel by the doors, the buttons marked with unfamiliar characters—except for two near the bottom, which had pictures instead of floor numbers. Hoping Alteans designed their elevators the same way humans did, Shiro hammered the button on the right.

The doors slid open, just as Sendak lashed out at Shiro, who ducked, grabbed Keith’s arm, and sprinted out of the elevator.

Now that Shiro was fighting at full strength, there was a noticeable shift in the battle. Sendak still held his own, and occasionally landed a hit that sent one of his opponents flying, but he took as many hits as he dealt out. Shiro’s arm was as much Galra tech as Sendak’s—not as flashy, perhaps, but every bit as strong. It could catch a punch that would have shattered bone. Sendak now had to pay attention to Shiro if he didn’t want to lose his head, but that left Keith free to strike at Sendak’s weaker side.

The fight progressed down the hallway, Shiro and Keith steadily retreating past pillars of crackling energy even as they drew blood. They were still smaller and more fragile, and Keith’s temper had cooled enough that he was no longer _actively_ courting death.

Unfortunately, the corridor didn’t go on indefinitely, and eventually Sendak had them backed up against a door. It retracted at their approached, but when Shiro dodged Sendak’s next attack, he found himself stepping onto a narrow catwalk suspended over a seemingly bottomless pit.

Keith grunting something that might have been a curse. “This is bad,” he whispered, falling back beside Shiro. “We’ve got no room to maneuver in here.”

Shiro grimaced in agreement. One solid hit from Sendak and they’d be tossed over the flimsy railing to their death. “We have to end this.”

“How?”

Three more steps brought Shiro to a round platform around what looked like some kind of engine or energy core. He eyed the band of energy where Sendak’s prosthetic connected to his shoulder. “Think you can sever his arm?” he whispered.

Keith smirked. “You just hold his attention for me.”

That wasn’t hard to do. Sendak was obviously more scared of Shiro’s arm than Keith’s sword, so when Keith took a glancing blow that knocked him back toward the railing, Sendak didn’t follow up, but turned instead to meet Shiro’s charge.

Friction vibrated up Shiro’s arm as his hand scored the surface of Sendak’s arm. He backed up one step at a time, matching Sendak blow for blow while carefully watching his footing, lest he end up pinned against the railing.

Sendak didn’t have time to force him that far back. As soon as Keith was out of Sendak’s line of sight he charged. Sendak turned at the sound of footsteps, but it was too late. Keith swung upward, his blade sliding cleanly between Sendak’s shoulder and elbow. The energy tether flickered out, and Sendak’s arm spun slowly across the ground.

Keith kicked it over the edge and Sendak raised his remaining arm futilely as Shiro backhanded him across the face with enough force to lay him out flat.

Shiro stopped, breathing hard. It had been a long time since he’d fought like this, and his body protested at the exertion. He let his Galra arm fall limp at his side, while Keith stepped toward Sendak, his sword still raised and ready.

Sendak spat a mouthful of violet blood onto the platform. He planted his remaining hand on the ground and tried to push himself up, but he collapsed after a brief struggle, moaning softly.

“Pathetic,” Keith spat. “To think the great Commander Sendak would lose to a human and a sorry excuse for a Galra.”

The words had a cruel, vicious edge to them, unlike anything Shiro had heard from Keith before. He stared at the young Galra in shock, watched the way Keith’s sword wavered and his eyes burned with something very much like hatred.

“Where’s your pride now, Sendak?” Keith demanded.

Shiro laid a hand on Keith’s shoulder. He spun, snarling, but faltered when he caught sight of Shiro. “It’s over, Keith,” Shiro whispered. “Don’t let him do this to you.”

Keith’s rage leeched out of him, his eyes going wide. He glanced quickly toward Sendak, then back at Shiro, his ears pressing flat against his head. “Shiro,” he said. “I...”

“How touching.” Sendak’s voice was weak, but as spiteful as ever, and both Keith and Shiro turned toward him. He’d managed to sit up, though he was clutching his head, a grimace of pain twisting his face. “A weakling and a coward. You make a perfect pair.”

“We beat you, didn’t we?” Shiro asked, keeping his voice cold and even, though he wanted to curse Sendak until he was blue in the face. “Admit it, Sendak. You lost.”

A bloody grin split Sendak’s face. “Yes. Yes, I did.” He latched onto the engine control panel with his hand and hauled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the console. “You really should have killed me.” He slammed his hand down on a button. “Haxus! Contact Lord Zarkon immediately. Tell him--”

Sendak never finished his message. By the time Shiro had reactivated his Galra arm, Keith already stood behind Sendak. The tip of his sword protruded from Sendak’s chest, glistening with fresh blood. Sendak gagged, wavering on his feet.

Suddenly Keith’s expression changed from cold determination to utter horror. He yanked his sword back, his yellow eyes wide with—fear? Guilt? Shiro couldn’t say. Sendak swayed, then toppled into the pit beneath the engine.

When he’d gone, there was only silence.

* * *

The paladins didn’t slow as they approached the bridge. The doors were sealed, the corridor silent and dark, but Coran was just ahead. Pidge could _feel_ it. He was all right. He had to be all right.

It was Lance who stopped them with a sudden _wait!_ as they approached the doors. Allura looked ready to punch straight through the steel (not that Pidge could blame her), and she rounded on Lance. “What?” she demanded.

Lance stood his ground. “This could be a trap.”

“Then we’ll fight our way out. Coran needs us. We don’t have time to waste.”

“Yeah, no, I got that,” Lance said impatiently. “It’s not us I’m worried about. What if Sendak’s in there? What if Coran’s knocked out, or hurt, or tied up? We rush in there and we might get him killed.”

Allura seemed to crumple, her arm dropping to her side. “You’re right,” she said, voice wavering. “We can’t put him in danger, not unless it’s our only option.”

“ _Is_ there another option?” Matt asked. “We have to get in there somehow.”

Lance stroked his chin, glancing around the corridor. Suddenly his face lit up. “Guys, I have a plan.”

Pidge followed Lance’s gaze to a small vent high on the wall. There was only one person here who could possibly fit inside.

Sighing, Pidge dismissed their bayard and trudged toward the wall. “Somebody give me a boost.”

“Wait.” Matt grabbed Pidge by the shoulder, stopping them halfway to the vent. “You’re not going in there alone.”

Pidge spun, temper flaring. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

Shock and hurt flashed across Matt’s face as he recoiled, snatching his hand back.

Pidge cringed. “Sorry. I didn’t… that came out wrong.”

Matt didn’t move, his hand hovering in front of his chest. His eyes were wide, his lips parted, but he shook himself and covered his shock. “It’s fine. I’m just… worried. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I know.” Pidge hunched their shoulders and stared at the floor. “But someone has to go, and the rest of you won’t fit.”

No one spoke. Pidge snuck a glance at Matt and found him visibly warring with himself. But Pidge already knew how that would end. As scared as Matt was, he knew what had to be done, and he wouldn’t stop it.

With a sympathetic smile, Pidge squeezed Matt’s arm, then bounded toward the vent. Hunk knelt and offered his hands as a stirrup. Pidge stepped into his palm, and he lifted them up until they were able to work the vent cover free and climb inside.

“Be careful, Pidge,” Allura called. “Let us know what you see, but _don’t_ attack until we have a plan.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Pidge started crawling, cringing at every bang, creak, and groan. Turned out it was impossible to move silently through air ducts, and the whole production quickly turned into a juggling act of stealth and speed and bruised elbows.

Then, finally, they reached another vent. The first thing Pidge noticed when they peered through the grating was the shattered crystal, now a dead husk hanging from the ceiling near Pidge, the rest a shimmer of dust on the floor. A new crystal sat nearby, glowing purple and trailing wires and cables toward the ceiling.

They only had a moment to wonder about the second crystal before they spotted Coran.

He was crumpled on the floor by the wall, like he’d been dragged out of the way and promptly forgotten. Pidge couldn’t tell from here if he was breathing or not, but there was fresh blood on his face and he wasn’t moving.

“I see Coran,” they whispered. “He doesn’t look good.”

“What about Sendak?” Lance asked.

Pidge scanned the bridge. “He’s not here. There’s a Galra robot, though, and it’s got a gun aimed at Coran.”

Lance swore softly.

Pidge silently summoned their bayard. “Look, guys. I’ve got a pretty clear shot from here. I think I can get that gun away from the robot, and then you can come in and finish it off.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, waiting by unspoken agreement for Allura to decide. She breathed in slowly, then said, “Take the shot.”

The bayard’s blade cut through the vent easily and Pidge lifted it out of its setting. “All right,” they breathed. “Ready...” They aimed carefully for the robot’s laser gun, breathed out, and fired. Their bayard shot across the room, a blur of green trailing a thin energy cord. The hook caught on the barrel of the gun, startling the robot. Pidge yanked back, shouting, “ _Now!_ ” as the gun flew out of the robot’s hand.

At almost the exact same moment, the door burst open and the other paladins charged in, Allura and Lance at the head of the pack. Lance fired a single shot, which caught the robot in the chest. Allura darted forward, grabbed the robot’s head between her hands, and crushed it like a soda can.

Whistling, Pidge dropped from the ceiling to the suddenly silent bridge. “Remind me never to get on your bad side,” they muttered.

Allura blinked at them, seemingly oblivious to what they’d said, then joined Matt at Coran’s side.

“He’s still alive,” Matt said, his fingers pressed to Coran’s neck. “We need to get him to the cryopods.”

“No.” Allura’s voice shook, but she firmed her jaw and repeated, “No,” as Matt gaped at her. “Sendak destroyed our crystal and installed a corrupt one.” She swept her arm to the side, indicating the scene of destruction behind her. “As long as that… _thing_ is powering the cryo-replenishers, they’re useless to us.”

Pidge glanced around the circle and the pale, weary faces of their friends. “Then… what do we do?”

“I know some first aid,” Matt said. “All three of us on the Kerberos mission had to take the training, since we didn’t have a medical officer on our crew. If I can get Coran down to the infirmary, I might be able to help him.”

“What about Sendak?” Lance asked. “He’s still out there somewhere.”

Allura ran her hand across Coran’s forehead, wiping some half dried blood that had gathered at the hairline. She looked uncertain, and that more than anything drove home what had just happened. After a moment, she closed her eyes and stood.

“We can’t waste time,” she said. “If Sendak doesn’t want to face us, then we won’t wait around like scorla on a leash. Hunk, Pidge, go with Matt and Coran to the infirmary. Keep an eye out for Sendak and watch each others’ back. Lance, I need you to scan the castle’s video feeds, see if you can pinpoint Sendak’s location.”

“And you?” Matt asked, watching with furrowed brow as Hunk gently lifted Coran.

Allura crossed to the twin pedestals that controlled the ship. They, too, now shone with an amethyst light, and Allura visibly recoiled before she placed her hands atop them. “We need a new crystal, which means we need a Balmera. I’m going to see if I can locate one near us.”

“Right.” Pidge nodded, tightened their grip on their bayard, and followed Hunk to the door. “Good luck.”

* * *

With a bit of trial and error, Shiro managed to access the castle’s cameras and locate the bridge feed, which showed him two unfamiliar humanoids at the controls. They wore matching armor, one black, the other blue.

They weren’t Galra, which was proof enough for Shiro.

“We’re in the clear,” he said to Keith, who hadn’t said a word since killing Sendak. “The paladins have retaken the ship. We should leave.”

“Are you sure?”

The words startled Shiro and he turned, frowning. “What?”

Keith wouldn’t quite meet Shiro’s eye. “You could stay. Voltron’s fighting against Zarkon, too. If you stayed, you wouldn’t have to pretend anymore. You could fight for Earth without having to deal with the Galra.”

Something clenched inside Shiro’s chest. Could he…?

He stopped himself before he let that thought go too far. Yes, it would be simple to stay here. It would be a relief to give up the charade. To get away from Zarkon and Haggar and the rest of the Galra once and for all. It was also an impossible dream.

“No,” he said, low but firm. “That’s not an option.”

He turned and headed for the door, hoping that would put a stop to the conversation, but after a moment of stunned silence, Keith followed, questions rising on a current of anger, and bursting out of him like bullets aimed at Shiro’s resolve.

“What—that’s it? You’re not even going to talk to them? You’re just going to walk away? This is your chance, Shiro! This is what you’ve wanted, the _only_ thing you’ve wanted for the last year. This is a way _out_.”

“That’s why I can’t take it.”

A growl built in the back of Keith’s throat. “ _Why_?”

Shiro stopped in the middle of the hallway, and Keith ran into him from behind. “You said Voltron is the only thing that can stand up to Zarkon, right?”

“Yeah...”

“Then they have bigger battles to fight than ours. I can’t ask them to give up the whole universe for one little planet that hasn’t even been attacked yet.”

“But--”

“We should hurry, or Orgul’s going to send out a search party.”

He started walking again, and Keith followed more slowly. The silence that surrounded them crackled with suspicion and discontent. Keith wasn’t buying Shiro’s excuses, but as long as he didn’t argue, Shiro didn’t care.

Besides, it wasn’t a total lie. Shiro _couldn’t_ ask Voltron to take on his fight, any more than he and Keith could dismantle Zarkon’s entire empire. Better to keep up the fight on both fronts, separately.

But there was another reason not to stay, one that Shiro didn’t want to admit to Keith: Keith was Galra, and the paladins would almost certainly view him as an enemy. Shiro could stay, but Keith had no such guarantee. And of course, without Shiro, he couldn’t return to Zarkon’s army. Maybe, _maybe_ they could convince the paladins to let a Galra defector stay, but how much would they trust him?

After everything Keith had sacrificed for him, Shiro couldn’t repay him like this.

It wasn’t until they reached the shuttle that Keith pointed out a problem Shiro hadn’t thought of. “So if the paladins are in control again, how do we keep them from shooting down the Galra shuttle leaving their castle?”

Shiro froze in the middle of strapping himself in. Then, he swore. With a wry smile, Keith reached for the comm system. “Audio only,” Shiro said quickly.

The look Keith gave him could have melted steel. “Attention Altean vessel,” he said, still looking at Shiro as though to say, _I’m not a total idiot, you know._

There was a moment of silence, and then the voice of a young woman came through the speakers. Shiro assumed she was the woman he’d seen on the bridge—the Black Paladin, perhaps. “Who is this? What do you want?”

Keith’s eyes darted to the console and he faltered, as though suddenly reconsidering his plan. “Uh...”

“We’re friends,” Shiro said smoothly. “We intercepted a Galra transmission saying they’d captured three of the Voltron lions, and we came to help.”

“Help _how_?” said a male voice, prodding and suspicious. Shiro guessed it was the Blue Paladin who had been with the Black Paladin on the bridge.

Keith’s uncertainty vanished in the face of his irritation. “Well, we killed Sendak, for a start.”

“ _What?_ No way! Who—how--?”

“We’re good at what we do.”

There was a heartbeat of silence, and then the Blue Paladin growled. “You wanna go, buddy? Cause I’ll go. Any time, any place.”

“What?” Keith’s brow furrowed. He glanced at Shiro, a look of utter confusion on his face. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you--”

“Oh, _I_ see how it is. You think you’re better than me, don’t you?”

“Well, I _didn’t_ ,” Keith growled, his tone adding a silent _idiot_.

Shiro frowned at him. “Keith, play nice.”

“Listen, pal--”

“ _Lance_ ,” the Black Paladin interjected. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry for my colleague. It’s been a long day.”

In the background, Shiro heard the Blue Paladin mutter something that sounded like, _I’ll bet he thinks he’s a real hero, yeah, well he can just shut his quiznak._

“I understand,” Shiro said. “Anyway, we lost our ship on the way in, so we’re going to have to take this Galra cruiser out. Didn’t want you to assume the worst and shoot us out of the sky.”

“Or _maybe_ you _are_ Galra and you’re just trying to sneak out, _hmm_? How come you’ve got your video feed turned off?”

Keith’s ears folded back. “Well, we tried to turn it on, but one look at your ugly face and the whole system shorted out.”

“Why you--”

“Anyone who fights back against the Galra is putting themself in danger,” the Black Paladin said. “We understand. If you don’t wish to tell us who you are, we won’t press, but… We would both stand a better chance against Zarkon if we teamed up. Would you consider staying?”

The Blue Paladin whined out a protest that didn’t seem to contain actual words, and Keith was almost as fast to reject the Black Paladin’s offer.

“We can’t,” he said shortly.

“Oh,” the Black Paladin said. “I see.”

“Yeah you see.” The Blue Paladin’s voice got suddenly loud, like he’d leaned in close to the microphone. “Why don’t you get off my space castle, jerkface, before I decide to show you what happens when you mess with a paladin of Voltron?”

Keith stared blankly at the console. “Whatever.”

Shiro found himself smiling, though it was a bittersweet sort of smile. “Thanks for the offer, really, but we have things to take care of, as I’m sure you do. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday.”

“Yes,” said the Black Paladin. The Blue Paladin started to say something, but shut up after a brief scuffle. “Yes, I would like that. Farewell, and good luck.”

“Farewell and good riddance more like,” the Blue Paladin added sullenly.

Shiro cut the connection before Keith could get drawn into another fight. Keith gave him a sour look, but Shiro just smiled and leaned back in the chair. “Just get us out of here, jerkface.” He couldn’t contain his laugh at the look of betrayal that flashed across Keith’s face just before he detached their ship from the castle and shot out into space, away from Voltron and back toward the Galra.


	10. Disease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... The paladins, with the help of Shiro and Keith, defeated Sendak and Haxus and retook the castle-ship. Shiro and Keith made contact with Allura and Lance, but ultimately left the castle headed for the front lines to stop Zarkon's progress toward Earth. Meanwhile Allura and the paladins headed for a nearby Balmera in search of a new crystal to power the ship and heal Coran.

Allura stood at the ship’s controls. From behind, she looked poised and unperturbed, her armor gleaming in the violet light of the Galra crystal, her long hair tied up in a tight bun, her hands resting on the twin pedestals that controlled her ship. But the tension was palpable the instant Matt walked through the doors.

He slowed, heart constricting. They’d all been hit hard by Sendak’s attack and Coran’s injuries, but none more than Allura. She’d stopped by the infirmary earlier, acting like it was a strictly pragmatic visit—informing them that a pair of resistance fighters, who must have brought down the shields, had killed Sendak; sending Hunk off with Lance to stow Sendak’s lieutenant, Haxus, in a cryopod.

Matt had been up to his eyeballs in Altean medicine, relying on Pidge’s half-finished translation software to decipher labels, as the Altean tech in the castle-ship and paladin armor, as well as the chip the Galra had implanted in Matt, only translated spoken words. Even so, he’d seen the ache in Allura’s eyes when her gaze fell on Coran.

He stepped up beside her now, searching for the right words. He could feel the Galra crystal behind him, radiating a sick, oily sort of aura that raised the hairs on the back of Matt’s neck.

“Matt,” she said, and lifted one hand to wipe at her cheeks. Matt pretended not to notice. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Matt nodded, staring out the viewscreen at Arus. Allura had mentioned that the engine would need to be fixed and the navigational system rebooted before they could move. Hunk should have gone down to the engine room once he was done moving Haxus.

“Coran’s stable,” he said without preamble. Allura tensed, pressing her lips together. “He needs a cryopod, of course, but I did what I could. I think he’ll be fine for now, but Pidge is watching him, just in case.”

He refrained from adding any details about Coran’s condition. Allura had already seen the extensive burns caused by the explosion, the lacerations where he’d been hit by chunks of crystal. They’d found antibiotics for those and wrapped the worst of the wounds. That was enough for Allura to worry about without Matt bringing up the internal injuries.

To be honest, Matt was surprised at how well Coran was doing. Matt didn’t know normal ranges for Altean vital signs, but Coran’s pulse and breathing were steady. If they came out of this intact, he was going to have Allura and Coran give him a crash course in Altean physiology.

 _Not if,_ he told himself. _When._

He looked up at Allura, fidgeting through the silence. He was tired and achy from the earlier battle, and he was getting queasy from the Galran mood lighting, and he suspected Allura wasn’t much better off. If she was anything like him, talking would do her some good.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but, uh, what did you do to Coran? The glowing lights, I mean.” Just before Allura had left the infirmary, she’d laid a hand on Coran’s forehead. The places where their skin touched had glowed faintly for a few seconds after Allura pulled her hand away. Matt didn’t say that he’d been afraid to ask in the moment, in case it was some sort of Altean last rites, but he’d been curious ever since.

Fortunately, Allura didn’t seem offended at his question. “Do you know what Quintessence is?”

A chill went through him. He tensed, hoping Allura wouldn’t notice, but she glanced at him with a furrowed brow. “I heard the Galra talk about it once or twice. It’s some kind of energy source, right?”

“The energy of life itself,” Allura replied. “All living things need it to survive, so all ships require a supply in order to support their passengers and crew. It’s common to use Quintessence to power all of the ship’s systems so the energy spreads throughout the ship and travelers do not need to visit Quintessence chambers to stay healthy.”

“So people don’t make their own Quintessence?” Matt asked.

Allura shook her head. “Some do, but the vast majority absorb the Quintessence of their home planet. Before the discovery of Balmera, which produce excess Quintessence that is stored in large crystals, interstellar travel was next to impossible. Most species grow frail and die after just a few days without Quintessence.”

Memories stirred within Matt, dark days, fearful days. Weakness, cold, and death. The prison population dwindling as time went on.

“Alteans are among the more resilient peoples, as we are able to store Quintessence and survive for a time off these reserves.”

Matt blocked out the memories hammering at his awareness, holding Coran’s pale face in his mind. Part of him knew he was running himself ragged, running from his past. Maybe he was an idiot for clinging to others’ problems instead of facing his own. Maybe he was just selfish. But he had to keep moving, and this was the only way he knew how. Lance’s homesickness, Coran’s injuries, Allura’s worry… It was laughable, piling all these things on Matt’s shoulders, when Matt was buckling under the weight of simple memories, but being there for the others was the one thing that made Matt feel strong.

He needed so desperately to feel strong.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So what does Quintessence have to do with Coran?”

“Quintessence has some minor regenerative abilities. When refined, it can power the cryo-replenishers, but even raw Quintessence can sustain someone close to death.” She paused, staring down at her hands. “What you saw was me transferring some of my Quintessence to Coran.”

Matt’s jaw dropped. “That’s amazing!”

Allura glanced at him, then away, flushing. “It’s nothing. Any Altean can do the same—though I’m not certain it made a difference this time. After ten thousand years in the cryo-replenishers, Coran and I have both absorbed a large amount of Quintessence from the castle, more than I’ve ever held at one time.”

“Oh. Is that why Coran’s doing so well?”

“Perhaps.” Allura lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know that anyone has held this much Quintessence before. I doubt it will fully heal Coran without the pods’ assistance, but it might prevent his condition from worsening.”

“Still,” Matt said. “That’s pretty impressive if you ask--”

“Hey, uh, Allura?” Hunk’s voice over the comm system interrupted their conversation, and Allura quickly brought up the video feed. It showed Hunk, hair mussed and sweaty, a smudge of oil on his cheek, standing in what must have been the engine room, Lance behind him.

Both looked shaken.

“What’s wrong?” Matt asked. “Is it the engine?”

“Uh, no. No, the engine’s fine,” Hunk said. “Just finished putting it back together. I’m running a quick diagnostic, but everything looks good so far. We should be ready to fly.”

Allura frowned. “Then what’s the problem?”

Hunk and Lance exchanged looks. “Well...” Hunk said.

“You see...” Lance ran a hand through his hair. “It’s Haxus.”

“What about him?” Allura demanded, while Matt summoned his bayard and put on his helmet to contact Pidge.

Hunk spoke before Matt could tell Pidge to be careful.

“Haxus is dead.”

“ _What?_ ”

Matt and Allura spoke simultaneously, and it was hard to say who sounded more shocked. “ _Dead?_ ” Matt asked. “How? I thought Rover was supposed to keep him stunned.”

Hunk looked like he was about to be sick. “I don’t know for sure, but I watched the footage from Rover’s camera, and I think Haxus must have had, I don’t know, the Galra equivalent of a cyanide pill?” He swallowed with some difficulty. “All I know is when he woke up he stuck something in his mouth, Rover tased him, and then he stopped moving.”

“Quiznak,” Allura muttered. Matt knew what she was thinking. Haxus might have had useful information for them, if they’d managed to tease it out of him. Galra codes, bases, trade routes. Military secrets or weaknesses to exploit.

At the same time, though, Matt couldn’t help feeling some relief. Haxus hadn’t been a low-level grunt. Threats wouldn’t have been enough to make him talk, and Matt didn’t think he’d be able to stomach anything worse than that.

“At least now we don’t have to worry about him escaping,” he said weakly.

Hunk’s smile was thin. “Anyway, the diagnostic’s done. Looks like we’re ready to go.”

Visibly gathering herself, Allura nodded. “Good work. Get Pidge and meet on the bridge. I’m going to open a wormhole to the Balmera.”

She terminated the connection and gripped the controls, grimacing as the sickly purple glow of the bridge intensified. A moment later, a wormhole appeared ahead of them, much like the ones that had brought the Blue Lion to the castle and taken the paladins to find the Green and Yellow Lions. This one, though, was much larger, and the castle-ship glided through.

The stars around them winked out, replaced briefly by a chaotic swirl of blues and blacks. There was a moment of blinding white light, and then they emerged near an unfamiliar planet.

Almost instantly, an alarm began to flash. Allura called up a display, and the bottom went out of Matt’s stomach. The display showed the planet ahead of them, several locations marked on its surface. Each was labeled with tiny Altean script, and the flashing red banner gave Matt a pretty good idea what the scanners had picked up.

“Galra.”

* * *

Lan Trossa was a small, remote, sparsely populated planet. The archives onboard the _Envoy_ had offered very little in the way of information, and Keith recited it to himself now. _Warm climate, single landmass mostly covered in jungle. No large cities and estimated population of fewer than one million sentient beings. Primitive but physically powerful inhabitants._

Keith didn’t put much faith in the assessment. To Zarkon, most races were primitive. They wouldn’t know until they landed whether the Trossa were in any position to oust the Galra invaders.

Before they could even consider that, however, Keith and Shiro would have to survive Commander Orgul. Their small shuttle had received orders almost the same instant it emerged from the final wormhole, telling Keith to proceed to port F-13 and report to Orgul immediately.

It had only been a few hours since leaving the Altean ship, and Keith was already beginning to miss having a half dozen people who only _might_ try to kill him. Down on the surface of Lan Trossa, there would be hundreds— _thousands—_ of Galra, and no way to know if they had orders to shoot until it was too late to do anything.

“It’s going to be fine,” Shiro murmured, surrendering the controls to Keith. They’d been taking turns piloting the ship for the last several hours, each getting up to stretch every so often, but they both agreed it would be safer for Keith to be in control while they shared airspace with other Galra.

The temptation to turn around and flee was stronger than Keith had anticipated. He grit his teeth against the urge. “You’d better be right.”

“You’ll do fine.”

Keith shot him a glare. He’d been trying not to think about the upcoming confrontation. They were more than an hour behind schedule, and Keith knew Orgul too well to hope she’d let it slide. She’d been livid at having to accept Keith and Shiro as part of her crew, and if there was even a slight chance to get rid of them, she would take it.

He recited their cover story once more as he followed the beacon to a Galra base near the coast of the large continent. All too soon, he was on the ground, the ship humming as it powered down. Keith lingered at the controls until Shiro stood and moved for the exit.

 _No point in delaying the inevitable_ , he thought. He stood, squared his shoulders, and reached for the knife at his back--

It was gone.

Keith froze, glancing around the cockpit. The sheath was still in its usual place at his spine, but it was empty now, like the blade had fallen out in his seat. But it wasn’t there, or on the floor by the control panel. In fact it didn’t seem to be anywhere in the ship.

With a sinking sensation, he remembered the fight against Sendak. Keith had lost his dagger aboard the Altean vessel. He felt exposed without it. Vulnerable. Though he still had his father’s sword, and though the sword was the better weapon, he’d always felt safer with the dagger close at hand.

“What’s wrong?” Shiro asked.

Keith closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He lead them out of the ship, letting his frustration over the dagger quicken his pace. He grabbed the first mechanic he saw by the collar, yanking the poor woman nearly off her feet. “Where’s your Commander?”

Shaking, she stuttered out a series of directions, and Keith stalked off, Shiro following silently behind. Soldiers scurried out their way as they stormed through the base, which Keith took to mean he looked convincingly like a pissed off Galra prince. No one wanted to be caught in the crossfire, so they met no resistance until they reached Orgul’s office.

Her guards at least made an attempt to bar the way, but when Keith growled at them they faltered, giving him a chance to throw the door open and enter.

“Commander,” Orgul said, her voice dripping with saccharine concern. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Were you in on this, Orgul?” Keith demanded.

Orgul’s eyebrows shot up. “In on what?”

“That… _ship_ Tarrok gave me—if it can even be called that. The engine stalled after three jumps. Took me an _hour_ to get it running again.” He crossed the room in two steps and planted his hands on Orgul’s desk. “If I find out this was all part of some plan to strand me in deep space, I swear I’ll tear you limb from limb.”

Orgul seemed more amused by his anger than intimidated, but that was hardly surprising. She was one of Zarkon’s princes. If she could be cowed by one little outburst, she never would have made it this far.

That was fine. Keith didn’t need to actually scare her, just convince her he was _trying_ to scare her. As Shiro had pointed out, the best way to keep Orgul from asking questions about their delay was to be the first one to get mad about it. Assuming, of course, she didn’t see through the act.

Thankfully, she seemed to take Keith’s anger at face value. Her lip curled as she waved away the computer display she’d been looking at. “Take it up with Haggar if you like,” she said. “You and I both know I couldn’t have sabotaged your ship, even if I _had_ thought of it.”

Keith glared at her for a long moment before he huffed and straightened. “Fine. We’re here now. Where do you want us?” He didn’t have to try to sound irritated at the thought of taking orders from Orgul, and he certainly made no effort to hide it.

Orgul, meanwhile, only smiled wider, stood, and gestured for them to follow her. She led them a short distance down the hall, to a command center teaming with mid-ranking officers. They all froze, then saluted as Orgul walked in. She gestured curtly toward the door, and they streamed out with a chorus of, “Vrepit sa, Commander.”

When they were alone, Orgul called up a map of the planet. One small patch of land near their current location flashed red. “As you can see, we have nearly finished taking Lan Trossa for Lord Zarkon. I _was_ going to send the pair of you out with my troops to wipe out the last of the resistance, but progress can’t wait for engine troubles.”

A few commands brought up video and audio feeds from the troops. The room filled with the sounds of battle, and scenes of carnage filled the walls. The Trossa—large reptilian creatures with thick chests and vicious-looking beaks—fought desperately against the Galra, but they were horrifically outnumbered and possessed only a few weapons, none as advanced as Galra equipment.

Keith heard Shiro’s soft intake of breath and willed him to keep his face blank. Keith didn’t dare look at him, afraid to draw Orgul’s attention to either of them. His own face felt like stone, and he forced himself to watch the bloodbath despite the churning in his gut. He couldn’t summon Orgul’s sadistic glee, but with luck he might pass for indifferent.

He consoled himself with the knowledge that Lan Trossa was far beyond saving. He hadn’t condemned these people by stopping to aid the paladins of Voltron.

It didn’t help.

But he watched, because he knew it was what Orgul was expecting. A Galra never turned away from a fight.

* * *

The paladins gathered on the bridge, the light of the Galra crystal casting eerie shadows on their faces. They all looked as tired as Matt felt, but none more than Allura, who stood with her back to the rest, glaring at the display as though she could change reality through sheer willpower.

“Is this the Balmera?” Hunk asked.

Allura drew herself up and turned toward them. “Yes, but I’m afraid there’s bad news.”

“Don’t tell me,” Pidge said sourly. “We’re not alone.”

Matt grimaced. “Are we ever?”

“The castle’s scanners are not at full power,” Allura said, “but even so, they have detected considerable Galra activity on the surface. There’s a good chance we’ll have to fight our way through to the crystal.” She flicked her hand, and a three-dimensional model of the Balmera appeared overhead. Red blips marked the surface, clustered around what looked to be massive pits. Mines, maybe?

Lance’s brows knit together. “That’s… a lot of Galra.”

Allura pursed her lips. “I had hoped to remain in the castle to look after Coran and provide guidance for you all, but I think we will need our full strength to get through their defenses.”

“We could try to sneak in,” Pidge said. “I just finished installing a cloaking device on the Green Lion.”

“No,” Hunk said. “No way. Maybe we could sneak down there, _maybe_. But then we’d have to get the crystal _and_ get out without being seen. Sorry, Pidge, not to knock your skill, but we just aren’t that lucky.”

Pidge slouched against the mangled remains of a control panel. “You’re probably right. Guess we’re gonna have to do this the hard way, huh?”

“Hard for the _Galra,_ maybe,” Lance said. Matt saw through his bravado—likely they all did—but he appreciated the enthusiasm all the same. “We’re gonna tear them apart, find that crystal, then bask in Coran’s gratitude.”

“He’ll probably thank you by making dinner,” Pidge said, smirking as Lance struggled to suppress a shudder. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure he knows you deserve _all_ the thanks.”

Matt managed a small smile for Pidge’s sake, but Hunk looked like he was going to be sick, and Allura had gone back to staring at the display. “We’ll have to split up,” she said.

The silence that fell over the bridge was so thick it was almost palpable, and the three younger paladins exchanged looks that seemed to say, _Which one of you wants to ask the princess if she’s crazy?_ No one volunteered, so Matt spoke up.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” Allura said bluntly. She looked at them all, smiling wryly. “But we haven’t any choice. The longer we drag this battle out, the more likely the Galra are to notice the castle and attack. With Sendak’s crystal powering our defenses, we cannot count on them to protect Coran.”

She raised her hands toward the display, zooming in on one of the mine shafts, if that’s what they were. This one was some distance from the rest.

“I will need two of you to accompany me into the Balmera. The ship’s scanners cannot penetrate the Balmera’s shell, so we won’t know until we’re down there what the Galra have in store. We’ll just have to deal with it as it comes, find a crystal, and get out. The other two--” She zoomed out again, giving them all a good view of the surface defenses-- “will distract the Galra ships, eliminate as many as possible, and ensure the rest of us have a way out.”

“So… death by laser guns, or death by _bigger_ laser guns,” Hunk said. “Not much of a choice.”

“I’ll stay topside.” Lance’s voice was deathly serious and, seeming to realize this, he suddenly grinned. “I mean, we’re gonna need the best pilots up there, right? No worries. I’ve got this covered.”

Pidge snorted.

Matt considered talking Lance out of this, but Hunk was right, if a little on the grim side. There were no safe options here, and somebody had to stay in the air. It certainly wasn’t going to be Matt.

“If you’re going in there, Princess, I’m coming with you.”

“Me too,” Hunk said. He held up his hands as the others turned toward him. “Not that I think it’s a good idea, to be clear. If they’ve got that much going on _outside_ the mines, the place is probably swarming with Galra down by the valuable stuff. I just—hey. Lance is right, you need the best pilots in the air.”

“Thank you, Hunk,” Lance said.

Hunk ignored him. “Now, I don’t know who that is. Allura, probably, but you already said you’re going down. The one thing I _do_ know is that it’s not _me._ Besides.” He summoned his bayard. “I’ve got a big gun.”

Pidge snickered. “I guess that means I’m with Lance.”

“Hell yeah you are.” Lance held out a fist and, rolling their eyes, Pidge fistbumped him. “We’re gonna kick Galra _ass_.”

It probably wasn’t a good thing that Matt was able to swallow the wave of fear that accompanied the thought of Pidge in the middle of a firefight. They were a paladin now, just like Matt. Danger came with the job. God, how had it come to this?

“All right,” he said, nodding to Allura. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Moments later the five Lions dropped below the clouds, opening fire on the Galra structures below before the defenders even knew they were there.

“Watch your aim,” Allura said. “The Balmera is a living creature, and the Galra have done enough harm.”

Matt had to agree. He didn’t know what the Balmeras of old had looked like, but this—the dry, brown land, the gaping holes in the surface, the buildings glowing with violet light—this place reeked of decay and abuse.

Allura needn’t have worried, however; each of the lions fired their lasers with pinpoint accuracy, demolishing three guard towers and a power station before the Galra had any ships in the air. Then a stream of fighters rose from a structure to the north. Pidge and Lance broke off while the rest veered downward, hurtling toward the mine shaft. Girders and support beams flashed by to either side of Red, too fast to see. Hunk clipped one and his Lion veered to the side, slamming against the wall of the mine. A shower of stone rained down around them.

Matt stopped trying to steer, reaching out to the seed of consciousness at Red’s core. He felt a rumble in his chest and saw—more. It was a strange feeling, like the viewscreens around him had vanished. He heard the whistle of wind past his ears, felt the obstacles in his path. When he dodged, he was only peripherally aware of his hands on the controls. He may not have even touched the yoke, just willed Red to move.

The metal beams gave way suddenly to open air and then, just as quickly, solid ground. Matt twisted, fired his thrusters, and landed with only a little jostling. Allura set down lightly beside him, Hunk with considerably more force—not enough to do any damage to the lion, but enough to shake dust loose from the walls.

Tunnels opened up in the walls around them, lit by scattered, dimly glowing crystals. They were much too small for the lions.

“We’re in,” Allura said, emerging from her lion.

“Roger that,” Lance replied. “Good luck finding a crystal.”

Matt powered down his lion and headed for the exit. “You two be careful, you hear? No unnecessary risks. You’re a distraction, not an army, so don’t be afraid to pull back if things get hot.”

Pidge groaned. “Matt, we’ll be _fine_. Worry about yourself.”

 _Not likely_. Matt’s stomach churned as soon as his feet touched solid ground. He could practically taste the Galra’s poison seeping through the Balmera, rotting it from the inside. He nodded to Allura and followed her into one of the nearby tunnels, but he couldn’t ignore the ache in his chest. The Balmera was a living creature, and it was suffering.

In another lifetime, one where Coran’s life wasn’t on the line, one where they’d figured out how to form Voltron, maybe they could have driven the Galra out of here entirely, not simply stolen a crystal. He tried not to feel like a failure of a paladin for accepting their limitations.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of footsteps. Matt and Hunk drew their bayards and readied themselves for battle, but Allura’s face brightened. “Balmerans!” she cried, just as two figures rounded the corner.

It took only a glance to know they were not Galra. Taller than Hunk, built like wrestlers with skin that either was stone or looked remarkably like it, they wore twin looks of surprise. Their arms were long and muscular, their two-toed feet bare. Instead of hair they had a rigid carapace like a helmet studded with small horns.

“You… are not Galra,” said the one on the right, who was perhaps three inches taller than Hunk and wore a green and yellow smock.

“Neither are you,” said Hunk, grinning. “Good news all around!”

The Balmeran blinked, then laughed, a light and surprised sound. “I am Shay,” she said, then raised a hand toward the taller, scowling Balmeran beside her. “This one, my brother Rax.”

“I’m Hunk, and this is Allura and Matt.”

Rax’s scowl only deepened. “What are you doing here? None but Galra have been seen on our Balmera for generations.”

“We are paladins of Voltron,” Allura said. When that didn’t seem to mean anything to the Balmerans, she elaborated. “We are fighting back against Zarkon’s empire, but our ship was damaged. We came here to find a battleship class crystal.”

“You will not find one,” Rax said, almost combatively. “Galra have already taken all the Balmera has to give, and then they have taken more.”

“Rax,” Shay whispered. “These strangers are enemy to the Galra. If we help them--”

“If we help them, we will only anger the Galra. We owe the skylings nothing, Shay. Leave them. _Exunt._ ”

Hunk stepped forward, dismissing his bayard and spreading his hands wide. “Please,” he said. “Our friend is hurt, bad. Without that crystal, he could die.”

Rax opened his mouth to argue, but Shay was quicker. “We will help.”

Rax rounded on her. “Shay!”

“No, Rax. We are not Galra. We do not turn our backs on people in need of aid.”

Some of Rax’s resistance melted, but it seemed he wasn’t done yet. “Even _if_ we would help, how? The Galra take whatever crystals they find, and battleship class are guarded more than most.”

“There is one,” Shay said, smiling as the paladins perked up. “Found days ago and not yet excavated. This way.”

* * *

“Stop being difficult.”

“I’m _not_ being difficult,” Keith grumbled, crossing his arms as his father tried to drag him into the room. “This is stupid.”

It was a lot more than simply _stupid_ , Keith thought, but that was the best word he could think of to describe the situation. He stood just outside a classroom filled with the children of Galra princes and other elites, every one of them loud and annoying and unfamiliar. Back on the _Executioner_ , Keith hadn’t known many children his age; most were shipped back to the Galra homeworld for schooling, so to be suddenly presented with a swarm of eight-year-olds was overwhelming, to say the least.

He didn’t understand why he had to be here. He learned enough about fighting from his father, and the archives contained any other information he might need.

“I don’t want to train here,” he said stubbornly, glaring at his father. “I want to stay on the _Executioner_.”

“You can’t.”

“You’re a _prince_ ,” he told his father. “You can do whatever you want.”

His father’s face creased into a frown, his eyes narrowing in a way Keith knew meant he was running out of patience. “Lord Zarkon himself put this system in place. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t take you out of here.”

Keith hunched his shoulders and glared into the room. Why did there have to be so many of them? Keith didn’t like people, and he especially didn’t like other kids. He would learn faster and grow stronger if he was allowed to train on his own, without other people there to slow things down. Wasn’t that what Zarkon wanted—better officers?

Apparently not. Keith’s father grabbed him by the shoulders, the points of his claws digging into his shoulder just enough to keep him from resisting. They walked into the classroom together and marched up to the instructor, a burly man who looked about as pleased to be here as Keith was.

At least he wasn’t alone in his suffering.

There were no goodbyes. Once the instructor found Keith’s name on his list, he sent him off to his seat near the back of the room. Keith turned for one last plea to his father—but his father had already gone, leaving Keith alone in a room full of strangers.

He felt the weight of two dozen gazes on him as he made his way to his desk at the back of the room. He wore a personal computer on his wrist and had his mother’s dagger sheathed at his side. Aside from that, he hadn’t been allowed to bring anything onboard the _Reaper_. Even the clothes he wore were standard-issue, identical to what everyone else in the class wore. They itched, and it took all Keith’s willpower not to fidget in his seat.

A few more students trickled in, their parents vanishing as quickly as Keith’s father had. A few sat quietly at their desks or talked in small groups. Others wrestled and argued in the aisles.

All of them fell silent as the instructor brought his fist down on the podium at the front of the room. “Alright, maggots, pair off.”

Keith frowned at the man for a moment too long, confused by the lack of greeting or introduction. By the time he turned to look for a partner, almost everyone else had already paired off. He supposed some of them must have known each other before today, or had already made friends.

Keith was left with a girl two inches taller than him, burly and thick-shouldered. She looked like she could lift Keith over her head without breaking a sweat. Maybe this was a physical exercise, and her size would come in handy. Keith certainly wasn’t going to be winning any contests of strength any time soon. His father had trained him mostly on speed and agility and strategy. The things an officer needed. He’d always said brute strength was the weapon of the footsoldier.

The instructor ordered a pair at the front of the room to join him on the raised platform, a clear area about ten paces square. He made them set aside their daggers before they stepped up to join him.

“Face off,” he told them. The pair, two boys who looked strikingly similar, stared at each other, then squared off a few feet apart, hands hanging uselessly at their sides. “Good.” The instructor held out his hand, a single knife held between two fingers. Glancing at each boy in turn, the instructor dropped the knife. “Fight.”

The boys froze. Keith sucked in a breath and held it, watching the boys with some combination of horror and anticipation. The boys stared at each other, then down at the knife.

The one on the right broke first, taking a single step back and looking at the instructor with a frown. “I don’t want to fight Vit. He’s my brother.”

The instructor moved faster than an attacking sentry, grabbing the boy around the neck and slamming him against the display screen at the front of the room so hard it cracked. The boy whimpered, and his brother—Vit—stepped forward, a protest on his lips. The instructor backhanded him, knocking him to the floor.

“Lesson number one,” he growled, glaring at the gaping students. “A Galra never backs down from a fight. You hesitate in battle and you’re dead.”

He stepped back, letting the student drop to the ground. As he gasped for breath, the instructor retreated to his earlier post at the far edge of the stage. He addressed the whole room, though his eyes never left the brothers sprawled on the floor, the knife on the ground between them.

“This is the only warning any of you are going to get. In this program, your only options are victory or death. There is no room for weakness in Emperor Zarkon’s army. You refuse to fight and you’ve bought yourself a ticket to the ganu mines. Now.” He turned back to the pair before him. “Fight.”

* * *

Lance was almost— _almost—_ regretting his decision to stay topside and fight the Galra speeders. It had been fun for about, oh, two minutes. A few well-aimed lasers, a bunch of Galra dying in beautiful fireballs, a few more guard towers and...what were those, barracks? Power stations? Spas?

Whatever they were, they looked a lot better blown to pieces.

The problem was that the Galra just wouldn’t stop coming. Lance and Pidge were more agile than the Galra, and their lions had proven tough enough to take more than a few hits, but this was getting ridiculous.

“Shit!” Lance cried, bracing himself against the controls as a Galra laser slammed into Blue’s rump. He supposed they were starting to grow into their bond, because all of these hits were making _Lance_ sore, which would have been cool if it wasn’t so painful. Also annoying. He couldn’t dodge shots from behind him as well as shots from ahead, and as comfortable as his pilot’s seat was, it wasn’t _that_ comfortable. “Pidge!”

“Coming!” Pidge called. Green veered to the side, planting her feet against a guard tower, then kicked off as the Galra on Pidge’s tail opened fire.

Pidge twisted through the crossfire, taking only a few hits, while the rest of the lasers burned into the tower. Lance winced as it slammed against the surface of the Balmera. That was hardly the first time the Balmera had taken a hit like that, but it still made Lance cringe. _Sorry, buddy. We’ve gotta get them off you before you can heal._

The thought reminded him of the time his family’s dog had gotten fleas, and he grinned at the mental image of flea-sized Galra shaking their fists at him. (Less amusing was the image of Galra-sized fleas sucking his blood. Ew.) Pidge, meanwhile, had closed the distance between them, picking off the fighters hounding Lance.

“Thanks, Gunderson,” Lance said, urging Blue skyward. “Things are getting kinda crazy here. What do you say we head for the next shaft?”

“Lead the way.” Pidge dropped in behind Lance as they shot away toward the south. This would be the fourth mining setup they’d hit. Two of them they’d managed to destroy, but with more and more Galra fighters pouring out of tunnels and hangars, it didn’t look like they’d be able to keep it up much longer.

Especially with the literal _wall_ of Galra rising up dead ahead.

Shouting a warning that may or may not have included actual words, Lance pulled up, only to meet a hail of lasers from a dozen more fighters flying just above him.

“Oh, _quiznak_ ,” he muttered, staring at his display. There were way too many lights on the dashboard to comprehend, but the picture on his viewscreen was clear enough. A hundred Galra ahead, twelve or so above. “Get ready, Pidge. We’re gonna punch through this mob and duck into the mine shaft.”

“Hold on, _what_?”

The quiet little cave in the back of Lance’s mind where anxiety lived thought maybe Pidge had a point. Only an idiot would try breaking through where the enemy was strongest.

Lance eased Blue into a dive.

“I’m not giving a hundred Galra a clear shot of my ass,” Lance said to Pidge. “Now are you gonna help me or not?”

Pidge groaned, but the Green Lion kept pace with Blue, pulling away from the fighters overhead. No doubt they were surprised by this move, which was just one more reason to stand behind his decision. A moment later the Galra came in range, and Lance opened fire. Blue’s tail arced over her head and began picking off fighters one by one, Green doing the same beside her.

It wasn’t going to be enough. The lions’ lasers weren’t fast enough, and the Galra kept filling in the gaps in their formation as Lance and Pidge shot fighters down. Lasers flashed by on either side of Blue, some of them clipping her legs and rocking the cockpit. At this rate they were going to crash straight into the Galra.

But if this was a game of intergalactic chicken, Lance wasn’t going to be the first to pull out. He pushed Blue faster, hunching over the controls, his eyes glued to the wall of fighters ahead of him. There was just enough space in that formation to skim through, if he timed it right and shot down a fighter just before he reached the wall.

“Pidge,” he said. “Get behind me.”

“Do you have a plan?” Pidge asked warily.

Lance smirked, his thumb hovering over the trigger. The Galra were only a few hundred meters away now, and Blue’s shields were groaning under the onslaught.

 _Hold on, Blue,_ Lance thought. _You gotta work with me on this one._

Suddenly the formation changed, the Galra condensing toward Lance and Blue. Some of the fighters clipped each other and wobbled; a few even spiraled down toward the ground.

More stayed airborne, so tightly packed now Blue was never going to clear a gap big enough for her to fit through.

Roaring in defiance, Lance stayed the course. He counted his heartbeats, and at the last possible instant, he squeezed the trigger.

He knew something was different even before he fired. Something in the purr at the edge of his awareness, in the way the cockpit whirred with energy as it built up in Blue’s veins. He couldn’t have pinpointed what was different if he’d had all the time in the world, and in fact he had less than a second to think, _This is new_ , before Blue’s mouth dropped open and released a blast of ice.

Eight ships froze solid in an instant, dropping out of the sky as one unit and shattering on the ground below as Lance and Pidge skimmed through the opening they left behind. Lance laughed in elation and whirled his lion around, unloading again as Pidge soared past him.

“Since when have you been able to do that?” Pidge asked as four more fighters crashed to the ground.

Lance whooped and wheeled away before the Galra could retaliate. “I have no idea, but it’s _awesome_!” Crimson clouds flashed across his viewscreen as Blue looped around and bore down on the Galra from above. “Hey quiznaks!” he screamed at no one in particular. “Eat ice!”

* * *

Keith crouched in the artificial jungle in the bowels of the _Reaper_. He was eleven now, three years into his training, and the instructors had decided it was time to take their training to the next level.

“I see it.”

The comm crackled unpleasantly in Keith’s ear, and he bit his tongue to stave off the urge to rip his earpiece out. There was no room for distraction today—especially not something as trivial as static, even if it did grate as his nerves like a Rylian’s scales. He glanced at his wrist unit to pinpoint Vit’s location and snuck off through the foliage.

He’d learned a lot in the last three years: how to banish his hesitation, how to out-think a stronger opponent, how to keep his head down and stay off the instructors’ radar.

He hadn’t yet mastered the fine art of teamwork, though, and that might be a problem today, as he was supposed to work with Vit to hunt down the wild beast wandering the artificial jungle with them.

“What is it?” Keith demanded as he crept closer to Vit.

Vit grunted. “Big?”

Keith fought the urge to roll his eyes. Most people thought he’d been lucky to end up on Vit’s team today. The other boy was one of the strongest in the class, maybe _the_ best fighter.

He was also as dumb as a box of rocks.

“Describe it for me,” Keith said, the words ground out between his teeth.

Vit hesitated. “It’s got big claws,” he said. “But stumpy little legs. Hang on--”

There was a crackle on the radio, and Keith instinctively clapped a hand over his ear—for all the good it did him. Vit wasn’t talking anymore, just grunting and moving around. Keith was close enough now to hear him without the comms, and he quickened his pace, keeping low and out of sight. If there was one advantage to being the smallest in his class, it was stealth.

He stopped behind a thick shrub and peered at the scene ahead. Vit was wrestling with a stumpy, armored beast that Keith recognized as a rhomanar, an aggressive carnivore from the heart of the empire. Despite its short legs and bulky body, the rhomanar was lightning fast when it needed to be, and it was known to eviscerate other predators that infringed on its territory.

And Vit was wrestling it.

 _Idiot_ , Keith thought, circling around to the creature’s blind spot. It was a difficult task, with the two of them flailing around like that, but all the motion could only help Keith’s odds. He waited for the right moment, dagger clenched in his fist. They’d been given a shock wand for the hunt, but it wasn’t likely to help. Probably Vit had already tried, and instead of stunning the rhomanar, he’d only succeeded in pissing it off.

The beast righted itself, throwing Vit against a tree.

Keith seized on the moment of distraction and charged, leaping onto the rhomanar’s back. He squeezed the beast’s armored carapace between his knees, wrapped one arm around its neck, then swung his knife down, around, and back up into the rhomanar’s chest.

It screamed, the sound sending a chill through Keith, but he held on, pressing his face into the beast’s back and twisting his dagger. He didn’t let go until the animal had gone still beneath him.

He stood, hands wet with blood, and wiped his blade on his sleeve. Across the clearing, Vit staggered upright, swaying a bit as he touched his fingertips to the back of his head. There wasn’t much blood, but he seemed dazed.

“Excellent work.”

Littok, their instructor, emerged from the trees and nodded to Keith. “Clean, efficient kill. You’re dismissed.”

Keith sheathed his dagger, saluted, and started toward the exit, only to slow when he realized Vit wasn’t behind him. Littok had Vit backed against the tree, and one glance showed that the boy would have run and hid if he thought he could get away with it.

“As for you...” Littok drove a fist into Vit’s stomach. Vit choked and collapsed. “Pathetic. Keep that up and you’ll be joining your brother in the mining colonies before the year’s done. What do _you_ want?”

Keith hadn’t realized he’d been walking toward Littok until the man snapped at him. Freezing in his tracks, Keith shot a glance at Vit, crumpled on the ground.

“Sir...” Keith swallowed. “We completed the mission. Why are you punishing him?”

Amusement played across Littok’s face. “What? Feel bad for this pathetic excuse for a soldier?” He spit on the ground at Keith’s feet. “I guess weakness runs in the family.”

Keith had been about to back down and flee with as much dignity as he could muster, but Littok’s words sparked a sudden upsurge of anger. His hand went to his dagger. “ _What did you say?_ ”

“You heard me.” Littok’s mouth quirked up in a sneer. “Mercy… cowardice… kindness… Your father was much the same when he was your age, but he grew out of it eventually. You mother was foolish enough to hold onto her weakness.” He paused, looking Keith up and down. “You see which one of them survived long enough to raise you. Perhaps that tells you who it is you should be emulating.”

Keith was shaking now, his knuckles aching from gripping the hilt of his mother’s dagger. A torrent raged inside him, a thousand words he wanted to throw in Littok’s face. A thousand words that could easily have him shipped off to a mining colony for the rest of his life.

Just then, he didn’t care.

Vit stirred, saving Keith from his own anger. He murmured something too soft for Keith to hear.

“What?” Keith asked.

Pushing himself up into a crouch, Vit raised his head to glare at Keith. “I said, I don’t need your pity!” He flung his arm out, and Keith was too slow to dodge the shock wand flying toward him. It struck him in the side, and lightning coursed through his body.

It lasted only an instant before the wand fell to the ground, but that was enough to leave Keith winded and aching all over. He glared at Vit, who bared his teeth in return.

“Compassion is weakness,” Vit growled. “It has no place in a Galra soldier.”

Littok roared with laugher and clapped Vit on the shoulder hard enough to make him collapse again. “Spoken like a true Galra,” Littok said. “Go back to your quarters, Vit. I’ll see you on the training deck in the morning.” He turned his attention to Keith as Vit scrambled toward the exit, not sparing Keith so much as a backward glance. “Be grateful your classmate gave you a lesson. I would not have been so lenient.”

He grabbed the back of Keith’s uniform and hauled him to his feet.

“Weakness is a disease,” he said.

Keith hunched his shoulders as he finished the mantra: “It must be cut out.” He glared up at Littok, not bothering to disguise the hatred singing in his blood. “Vrepit sa, _sir_.”

* * *

Shay led the three paladins deeper into the Balmera, reaching out every now and then to trail her hand along the wall. Hunk watched her do this a few times before he worked up the courage to go talk to her.

...Not that he’d been doing anything more interesting up to that point. Matt seemed unnerved by what the Galra had done to the Balmera, the machinery embedded in the tunnels, the old scars on the floor, the cracked and clouded crystals. Hunk thought it might be a good idea to try to distract him, but, well, _Hunk_ wasn’t the best at keeping anyone from thinking about bad things.

Then there was Allura, who had one hand pressed to the side of her helmet, listening intently to whatever was happening on Lance and Pidge’s end. (Hunk had checked in with them once, then promptly decided his heart didn’t need the extra stress of all that mayhem. Allura wasn’t panicking yet, so they were probably still okay.)

Rax had left them near the lions, returning to his work in the mines with a final warning for his sister that the ‘skylings’ were not to be trusted.

Glancing one more time at his two friends, Hunk clasped his hands behind his back and strolled as casually as he could toward Shay, who smiled at him as she turned down a narrower corridor. Here she reached out again to touch the wall. This time, Hunk noticed a faint glow where she touched the...stone? Skin? Hunk tried not to think too hard about it.

“So, uh, what’s that for?”

Shay tipped her head to one side, pulled her hand back from the wall, and blinked a few times. Hunk had to admit it had been a bit unnerving, at first, to look into those blank yellow eyes. They looked almost like Galra eyes at first glance. Except Hunk was pretty sure no Galra alive had ever looked so open, so… genuine.

He gestured toward the wall, and the last glimmer of blue light. “Every time you touch the wall you get real focused. What are you doing? If… you don’t mind my asking.”

Shay smiled and shook her head. “Not at all.” She placed a hand firmly on the wall for a moment, though she didn’t slow her pace to maintain the contact. “This is how we Balmerans communicate. Balmera speaks to us and can send our thoughts to other Balmerans.”

“Wow. That’s pretty cool.”

“You think so?”

“Well, sure,” Hunk said. “If I want to talk to my friends I have to pick up a phone—or a comm, I guess, now. Telepathy is _way_ off the table for sure.”

Shay ducked under a metal beam that had been wedged across the tunnel as though to keep it from collapsing. “It does not seem so wondrous to me, though I suppose that may be because I have never known otherwise.”

“You don’t have comms, then?”

“The Galra do not allow it.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It is no great hindrance to us, except that we cannot contact Balmerans in other parts of the universe. If any remain.”

Hunk hadn’t thought about there being other Balmeras out there, about the people who lived on them knowing each other, about Shay having friends on another Balmera the way Hunk had friends in different states. The way Lance had family in Cuba and Pidge had friends online from all around the world. In a way, the Balmerans were all one people, even if they were scattered across the universe. Hunk wasn’t any less a human because he was stuck on the wrong side of a wormhole.

That thought left him feeling hollow, and he walked in silence beside Shay for a few steps. He wished there was some way for him to change things for Shay and her people. “How did this happen? How long have the Galra been here?”

Shay hesitated. “I know not,” she admitted, pausing at a bend in the tunnel. She reached out to the Balmera and waited for several long seconds before moving on. “I do not remember a time without them, nor do my parents. Grandmother tells stories, though I know not if they are of her childhood or only stories passed down from generations before.”

“They’ve been here that long?” Hunk asked. He felt a pang of guilt, and instantly felt stupid for it. Less than a week as a defender of the universe (ha!) and he was already taking responsibility for things that had happened _way_ before he was born? Lance must be rubbing off on him.

“The Galra empire is desperate for crystals,” Shay said, apparently not noticing Hunk’s dilemma. “Their empire is large, and they must power a great many machines. Grandmother says they were not always so greedy. Once, long ago, they traded with Balmerans like any other people. Then their hunger grew and they began to take over our people, enslave us, and force us to work for them. Because of them, we have no choice but to harvest crystals more quickly than the Balmera can grow them. She dies, and it is us who kill her.”

“That’s awful, Shay, I...” Hunk grimaced. “I’m so sorry.”

She smiled at him, a fleeting, self-conscious expression. “This ‘Voltron’ you speak of.” Shay paused, her steps slowing. “It is a weapon?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said. “The most powerful weapon in the universe, or so I hear.”

Shay nodded, staring at the ground. “And you mean to use it against the Galra?”

“Of course. We’re going to do everything in our power to free all the planets they’ve invaded.”

She nodded again, more decisively this time, and smiled at Hunk. “That is good to know. Now make haste. The crystal is near.”

* * *

Keith stood in the vestibule, staring into the Arena, his dagger clenched in his hand.

_What am I doing here?_

Years had passed since Keith first came to the _Reaper_. Years of training and testing as his class slowly dwindled. Of the two dozen who had been there on the first day, only ten remained. Most of the others had been sent off to work camps, to menial jobs on the Galra homeworld, to clerical work on other ships. A few had died.

Not Keith, though. He may still be the smallest, weakest fighter in his class, but he’d adapted. He’d _thrived_. Victory or death were the only options for a Galra, and death was no option at all.

He was fifteen, and today was the day of his Proof. If he survived today, he would finally be recognized as a Galra soldier and officially stationed on the _Executioner_ with his father. He had been permitted a few short visits over the last few years, never enough time to forget the endless hazard of his training. On the battlefield, any day could be your last, and the instructors on the _Reaper_ were keen to impress that lesson upon their students.

Now, finally, he would be free.

He just had to complete his Proof.

“Are you ready?”

Keith turned toward his father, his face carefully blank. Whatever reservations he had, whatever lingering traces of weakness or sentimentality still clung to him, he’d chosen his path. It was too late now to back out.

Keith’s silence must have been answer enough for his father, who bared his teeth in a smile. “Don’t fail me out there today.”

“I won’t,” Keith said, sheathing his mother’s dagger and clipping it to the back of his belt. “Don’t worry.”

His father’s eyes darted to the rack near the door. It was empty except for a simple metal sword, grip well worn and blade chipped in a few places. A standard gladiator’s sword, like the one training bots used.

Those who attempted the Proof were, of course, allowed to use their own weapons, but nothing had ever felt right in Keith’s hand. Nothing except his dagger, which would likely be of no use today. So he had requisitioned a sword. Simple. Utilitarian. Keith had trained with similar blades often enough to be proficient. He would make do; he always did.

He’d never bought into the belief that a particular weapon could turn the tide of battle. With few exceptions, a weapon’s strength depended mostly upon its user. Better to use what he knew worked, even if others dismissed it as useless.

His father obviously disagreed.

“You’re using _that_?” His lip curled, and Keith bristled in defense. “Pathetic.”

“It gets the job done.” Keith crossed his arms, glaring out into the Arena. The first row of seats was already filled, his classmates and instructors gathered to watch his fight, as Keith had already watched a half dozen Proofs before his.

Keith’s father grunted, then held something out toward him. “Use this.”

Keith stared down at the thing in his father’s hand. It was the hilt of an energy sword—an officer’s weapon. A few of Keith’s classmates had similar weapons, most of them much larger and more wasteful. Keith took it tentatively. When he activated the weapon, a blade of focused Quintessence shot out, three feet long and glowing with power.

He looked at his father questioningly.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s my sword. It’s time you had a weapon befitting your rank.”

Keith swung the blade a few times, testing its balance. It wasn’t bad so much as...different. His eyes strayed to the ordinary steel sword by the door. Part of him wanted to refuse his father’s gift and use the sword he knew. A much larger part knew this wasn’t the sort of thing he could argue.

So he nodded in his best imitation of gratitude, and his father clapped him on the shoulder before retreating, leaving Keith to prepare.

His shoulder burned where his father had touched him, the sensation gnawing at his concentration. _This was a mistake_ , he thought. But the time had come, and Keith drew himself up straight. Time for his Proof. No options beside victory and death.

He stepped into the Arena.

The noise hit him like a physical force, slowing him as he realized just how many people were watching him, waiting for him to fail. His instructors were there, along with his remaining classmates and their families. Spaced around the arena were soldiers wielding rifles. They wouldn’t step in unless Keith lost the fight and his opponent looked like he was going to make a break for it.

And there he was—a prisoner of war. An enemy combatant. He stood nearly nine feet tall and had thick gray skin. Tusks protruded from his mouth and each of his four arms ended in three-inch claws that could eviscerate Keith with a single strike if he wasn’t careful.

Then again, anything about the behemoth could kill Keith if he wasn’t careful. It seemed almost superfluous to have given him a sword—simple metal, but still deadly.

When Littok shouted for the match to begin, Keith wasted no time. He knew the longer he dawdled, the greater the chance he had of being killed, and he’d come too far to die today. He was smaller than his opponent, but likely smarter. He could end this quickly.

Keith charged in, taunting his opponent into a strike, then ducked. He knew better than to parry the blow, so he ignored it, stepping toward his opponent as the metal sword sang overhead. His opponent was already twisting his body, anticipating a counter strike.

Keith didn’t aim for his body.

Instead, he swung his sword high, and his opponent was a fraction to slow. The blade scored the prisoner’s face, injuring one eye. Blood gushed from the wound into the remaining eye and the prisoner bellowed in rage and pain. Keith darted out of sight behind a stone pillar. He moved on silent feet, circling his opponent, staying out of sight, debating the best angle of attack. It was, in a way, like hunting rhomanar with Vit. His opponent was dangerous, but bringing him down was simple as long as you weren’t stupid about it.

Keith saw his opportunity and struck while his opponent’s back was turned. He charged. As he approached his opponent he gathered himself, then leaped into the air, his sword held before him.

The blade entered his opponent’s back as easily as a laser splitting silk. Keith slammed against his opponent’s back, his momentum knocking them both to the ground. His opponent writhed beneath him, shouting in a language Keith didn’t know.

This was nothing at all like hunting a rhomanar.

Keith’s hand shook as he stood, pulling his father’s sword free and staring down at the dying prisoner. The man must not have been fitted with a translator chip, for which Keith was grateful. It was bad enough to hear the desperate, frightened tone. If he’d been able to understand the words, Keith thought he might have been sick.

He stood there, transfixed, as the prisoner’s thrashing slowed, the pool of blood beneath him slowly spreading. Keith had the strange feeling of being outside himself, an observer watching at a distance as blood dripped from the tip of his sword.

He’d never killed before. Not a sentient being. He’d seen death, yes, and he’d thought he was prepared, but this… This was horrifying.

Slowly sound returned to his world. His classmates were cheering, a few of his instructors clapping without any real enthusiasm. Keith looked at them, but saw only a blur of faces until his found his father, smiling in satisfaction. Their eyes locked, and his father nodded.

Keith wanted to run, but he forced himself to walk to the edge of the arena and climb over the wall into the stands. He’d stopped shaking, overcome now by an unsettling calm. _You chose this_ , he thought. _This is what you wanted._

He thought of Vit’s brother, soft and weak. He hadn’t liked fighting, and had done so only grudgingly. When the instructors began to talk about death, Vit’s brother had cowed. One day, he simply hadn’t showed up in class. The instructors said he’d chosen a life in exile, laboring in a mining colony, prying ganu from cold stone walls, breathing in dust and stale air.

Vit clapped Keith on the back, grinning savagely. Keith wondered if it was approval of Keith’s performance or anticipation of his own battle soon to come.

He wondered if anyone else felt like he did: off-balance. Confused.

Guilty.

Keith’s sword had deactivated at some point, but he still held it in a fist, his claws digging into the heel of his hand. Maybe Vit’s brother had had the right idea. Maybe it would be better to work in the mines, away from the war, away from the killing.

Keith would never know. He’d chosen his path, and now he had to see it through.

* * *

Roaring in fury, Keith hurled the hilt of his father’s sword across the room. It struck the wall with an unsatisfying _thunk_ and clattered to the ground.

By the door, Shiro stood frozen, his eyes wide as he stared at Keith in something approaching alarm.

Keith turned away from Shiro and pressed a palm to his forehead. _Get it together_ , he commanded himself. “Sorry,” he said lamely.

After a moment of silence, Shiro’s footsteps approached and a tentative hand brushed his shoulder. Keith tensed, but made no move to break the contact.

“I get it,” Shiro said softly. “That was...”

He didn’t finish, and Keith couldn’t blame him. The massacre had gone on for nearly an hour, Orgul’s soldiers slaughtering every Trossa they found. It made sense, in a brutal, abstract sort of way. The village had been the heart of the local resistance. It wasn’t enough to weaken them. They had to be destroyed utterly.

Knowing that had only made it more difficult to watch.

“It was supposed to be _different_ this time,” Keith whispered, screwing his eyes shut. He couldn’t look at Shiro right now, knowing that all he would see was disgust Keith couldn’t appease and pity he didn’t deserve. “We were supposed to save them.”

To his credit, Shiro didn’t pretend everything was okay. He didn’t try to make Keith feel better; it was bad enough swallowing the thoughts his own mind came up with. _We had nothing to do with this. We couldn’t have done anything even if we had arrived sooner. At least we weren’t out there in the middle of_ that.

Shiro put a comforting hand on Keith’s shoulder, and the weight of it felt like an accusation. “We’ll make them pay for this, Keith. I swear we will.”

* * *

“What is the sky like?”

Hunk turned toward Shay in surprise. They’d reached the crystal five minutes ago, and Allura was busy communing with the rock or something. (Honestly it looked like what Shay did when she talked to the Balmera, but Allura insisted it was an ancient ritual to harvest a crystal without harming the Balmera.) Matt stood near her, looking on in interest, while Hunk and Shay had taken up posts near the entrance to the chamber. They were supposed to be watching for Galra, but Hunk had made the mistake of turning the comms back on, so he’d mostly spent the last five minutes worrying about Lance and Pidge.

“You’ve never seen the sky?”

Shay shook her head. “A glimpse on occasion, as we pass through the mine shafts, though we are never allowed to linger there. I suppose the Galra think we may escape.”

Hunk’s heart ached a little more every time Shay revealed something about her people. Bad enough to be living under the eye of the Galra, to be forced to kill your home by harvesting crystals for Zarkon’s empire, but this? To never even see the sky?

He wanted to help the Balmerans so much that for once his anxiety wasn’t telling him all the things that could go wrong. It wasn’t enough to just slip away without causing any trouble for the Balmerans. It wasn’t enough to defeat Zarkon and hope that changed things here before the Balmera or any of its people died.

What was Voltron for, if not to help people in need?

Hunk leaned his head against the wall behind him, taking a deep breath to quiet the restlessness inside him. “The sky is… man, how can I describe it? It’s big—bigger than you can imagine. So big it goes on forever. I used to lay on the beach at night with my parents and look up at the stars. When you’re out away from big cities, you can see a million of them, scattered across the sky like diamonds like--” He paused, glancing around the chamber. “They’re like these crystals, only smaller and way farther away. We used to make up our own constellations. We’d draw stick figures in the stars and make up stories about them.”

He laughed suddenly, remembering a cluster of stars in the southern sky his mother had named the Stargazers. She said it reminded her of the three of them, lying side by side and reaching for the moon. He supposed he wouldn’t be able to see that constellation from the other side of the universe.

“Amazing,” Shay said, her voice hushed. “One day, I shall reach the surface and see the stars for myself.”

A small canister rolled around the corner, stopping at Hunk’s feet. He grabbed Shay and stumbled back, shouting at Matt and Allura to get down as white smoke poured from the canister. Shay began to cough and Hunk staggered, his vision going fuzzy.

He heard Allura shouting something indistinct between bouts of coughing, heard footsteps approaching. Through the haze he saw a group of Galra sentries rounding the corner, Shay’s brother Rax beside the Galra leading them.

“Rax...” Shay staggered, and Rax caught her, pulling her away from the paladins. “Why?”

Hunk didn’t hear Rax’s answer. He tried to summon his bayard, but it was so hard to focus. The world dimmed, voices running together into a stream of static. The last thing he saw were the crystals imbedded in the walls of the cavern, glowing like unfamiliar stars.

* * *

“Lance! Pidge!”

Allura’s voice burst through Blue’s speakers, startling Lance as he froze another wave of Galra. It had been pretty touch-and-go for a while there, but Blue’s ice breath had turned things around. A few more minutes, Lance figured, and the skies would be completely cleared of Galra fighters.

“Hey princess,” Lance said, trying to sound suave and heroic, like any good fighter pilot. “Done harvesting your crystal?”

“No.” Allura’s voice sounded oddly thick. “The Galra have found us. We’re surrounded… Some kind of… sedative...”

Lance’s blood ran cold. “Sedative?” he asked, voice shrill. “What’s going on down there?”

Allura didn’t respond.

“Allura?” Pidge asked, dropping their lion low so Lance could pick off the Galra they’d lured into range. “Matt, are you there? Hunk?”

The comms stayed silent, and Lance swore. “We’ve gotta get down there,” he told Pidge. “ _Now_.”

Pidge was already heading back toward the mining shaft where the other paladins had entered the Balmera. “Hold on, guys,” they said. “We’re coming.”

A flash of light bleached the landscape to white for a fraction of a second and then faded, leaving an afterimage burned into Lance’s vision. “What the hell was _that_?”

“Oh my god...”

“What?”

Pidge didn’t need to answer. Lance turned Blue’s head and caught sight of a meteorite falling from the sky. Or...no, not a meteorite. That was a ship. A Galra ship. It kicked up a wave of dust and stone as it hit the Balmera, and Lance swore he heard a cry of pain.

“Is that…?”

Pieces of metallic casing fell away, revealing a massive creature inside. It was smaller than the monster that had attacked them on Arus, though not by much, four-legged and covered in yellow fur wherever it didn’t have mechanical augmentations. It gave the impression of a wolf easily twice the size of the Black Lion. Next to it, Pidge’s lion looked like a kitten.

Pidge’s breath hissed between their teeth. “Well,” they said. “Looks like we’ve got a new friend to play with.”


	11. Heart of the Balmera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Keith and Shiro arrived on the besieged planet Lan Trossa, only to witness Commander Orgul's army crushing the last of the Trossa rebellion. Meanwhile the paladins found a Balmera teeming with Galra troops. Allura, Matt, and Hunk were captured while harvesting a crystal, and before Lance and Pidge could come to their aid, a new robeast arrived to challenge them.

Lance yelped as another explosion rocked his lion. He supposed he should be grateful that he wasn’t simply blown to bits, considering it was one of Zarkon’s robeasts on his tail, but gratitude was a _little_ hard to come by when all you wanted to do was jump down a mine shaft and save your friends.

They’d tried that once, after it became apparent that they weren’t going to beat the creature with just two lions. Unfortunately, this robeast, while smaller and less powerful than the one they’d fought on Arus, was also _much_ faster. At least as fast as a lion, though so far it had stayed on the ground. Lance wasn’t going to rule out the chance that it could fly, though he sincerely hoped it didn’t.

It moved like a cheetah—long, loping strides and quick turns, it’s robotic tail outstretched for balance. It looked like an animal, too—a wolf, maybe, but yellow and with scary-long claws. And, well, covered in mechanical bits. But Lance had no delusions about this being an ordinary animal. The way it watched him and Pidge, careful never to let them flank it, and the way it streaked toward mine shafts whenever they tried to get inside the Balmera, told Lance it was sentient, and very smart.

Pidge rained a hail of lasers down on the beast’s back—not that any of them hit; the alien wolf beast was way too fast for that. It twisted and sprang away, Pidge’s lasers nipping at its tail.

“Thanks for the save, Pidge,” Lance said, pulling back on Blue’s controls. They were safer in the sky, where they only had to deal with the beast’s lasers—one in its mouth, the other mounted on the tip of its tail, like the lions’ lasers. Lance was starting to get the impression that this thing was built for close-quarters, where its claws could rip into the cockpit and take care of an enemy pilot directly.

Green hovered beside him, still firing at the wolf beast. “Have you heard anything else from Allura?”

Lance grimaced, reaching over to silence the alarm warning him about structural damage to his lion’s hull. He’d made the ill-informed decision to ram the wolf beast the first time it tried to accompany them into the mines. Blue had _not_ enjoyed the experience.

“Not since this overgrown chihuahua got here,” Lance said, aiming just ahead of the beast and opening fire. It swerved to the side almost lazily, and Lance’s laser hit the Balmera. “At this rate, we’re going to end up killing the Balmera before we land a hit on that monster.”

“Do you have a better plan?” Pidge demanded. “We need to get down there, and this thing isn’t going to let us through without a fight.”

“We’re gonna have to split up.”

Pidge was silent for a full three seconds. “What?”

“You heard me, Pidge,” Lance said, shooting at the monster again—and missing. Again. “I’ll keep this thing busy. You go get the others.”

“Are you _crazy_? That thing will rip you to pieces!”

Lance grimaced. Not that he didn’t appreciate the concern, but he didn’t need the reminder. “Then I guess you’ll just have to hurry it up, won’t you, Gunderson?”

Pidge hesitated.

“Look, I’m not gonna fight the thing. I’m not _that_ stupid. I’ll just get it to chase me for a while. You go help the others, come back, and we’ll take it down together. All right?”

Pidge groaned. “ _Fine_. You’d better not get yourself killed.”

“I’ll do my best. Now go!” Lance tucked into a steep dive, gaining speed as he closed in on the robeast, which had spotted Pidge and was already heading for the northernmost mine shaft. “Oh no you _don’t_ ,” Lance growled, opening fire from less than a hundred feet above the monster.

It spun, claws digging trenches in the ground, and Lance’s shot went high. The beast wasn’t quite fast enough, though, and the laser clipped its haunch, taking a chunk out of its leg. The monster yipped in pain and opened fire on Lance, who swore and gunned the engine.

 _Not as tough as your friend on Arus, are you, doggy?_ Lance grinned, swerving as the beast continued to fire on him. Blue shuddered as a laser struck her shield and bounced off without doing much real damage. Out the edge of his viewscreen, Lance saw the Green Lion disappear down the mineshaft. The robeast roared in fury—a sound more like a grizzly bear than a wolf—and loped along beneath Lance, still firing up at him.

Lance grimaced, keeping a firm grip on the controls. He hoped Pidge managed to find the others and get back before the monster got lucky.

* * *

“The last of the Trossa rebels took refuge in a northern forest settlement,” Orgul said to the gathered officers, images of the bloodbath flashing across the screen behind her. Shiro kept his eye on the crowd watching her, if only so he didn’t have to face those horrors again. Beside him, Keith was tense enough to stab the first soldier to ask him a question.

A new image appeared on the screen, and Shiro couldn’t quite stop himself from looking. It showed a Galra woman standing in the ruins of a stone building, a slender energy blade in one hand and a pistol in the other. Shiro didn’t recognize her, but the red marks on her armor identified her as a high-level officer. Bodies of Trossa freedom fighters littered the ground around her, and Galra sentries raised Zarkon’s banner in the background.

“Lieutenant Commander Luba led our troops to the settlement and crushed the last resistance.” Orgul nodded to the side, and Shiro noticed Luba standing at attention at the edge of the stage, her hands clasped behind her back. “As of two hour ago, hostilities are at an end. Lan Trossa now belongs to Lord Zarkon!”

A roar went up throughout the room, Galra shouting and raising weapons and stomping their feet. Orgul stood a little taller, basking in her victory.

Keith scoffed, the sound almost lost in the furor. Shiro shot him a warning look, but he made no further comment.

After a long moment, Orgul raised her hand for silence. “ _Legion_ will be arriving shortly with reserve troops to hold the planet. We leave at dawn.”

That seemed to end the briefing, and although many of the officers remained to celebrate their victory, Keith turned on his heel and stalked toward the door. Shiro followed after, images from the final battle flashing through his head.

 _It will be different next time,_ he told himself, falling into step beside Keith. He knew better than to strike up a conversation now, so they walked in silence back to their quarters. They hadn’t rested since leaving the _Envoy_ , and Shiro would welcome the extra sleep. Tomorrow would bring a new planet—and this time, Keith and Shiro wouldn’t arrive too late to make a difference.

They would stop Zarkon’s conquest. They had to.

* * *

Allura woke to a pounding headache and a fire in her side.

Her vision swam as she sat up, clutching her head in both hands and focusing only on breathing. The memories of the last few minutes—hours?--returned slowly, bit by bit. The crystal. Shay. White gas filling the room. Galra sentries closing in around them.

When her vision finally cleared, she looked around, taking stock of the situation. She was in a small metal cage with Matt and Hunk, who were both still unconscious. The floor, ceiling, and three walls of their cage were solid metal, the fourth wall lined with thick bars too narrow to squeeze through. She and her companions had been stripped of their armor, leaving them in the thin black bodysuits beneath. They had no weapons, no communicators. Allura pulled at the bars, but they refused to bend.

How long had they been out? Allura couldn’t be certain. The white gas the Galra had used to knock them out reminded her of a Verusian weapon her people had used in the early days of the war, before Zarkon came to Altea. If it was the same chemical—something she could not be sure of, after ten thousand years—they likely hadn’t been unconscious for more than a few hundred ticks.

That was mere conjecture, though, and it didn’t help with their immediate predicament. Allura knelt between Matt and Hunk, checking them over for injuries. They seemed to be in no worse shape than Allura—unconscious and bruised, either from being dragged here or because the Galra enjoyed beating helpless prisoners, but otherwise unharmed.

Allura laid a hand on each paladin’s forehead and let a bit of her Quintessence slip into them. Not as much as she had given to Coran, as she had no idea how humans would react to Quintessential transfer, but enough to clear the lingering effects of the white gas.

Matt woke up coughing, and Allura helped him sit up. Hunk, meanwhile, rolled onto his side and groaned.

“Oh, man, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Matt grimaced his agreement. “What happened?”

Before Allura could answer, Hunk lurched upright. “Shay!” He still looked ill, but he staggered to his feet and fell against the bars of their cage. “ _Shay_!”

“It’s all right,” Allura said, standing and reaching out for Hunk. “Just remain calm.”

He spun toward her, smacking away her hand. “ _You_ remain calm! Those were _Galra_ down there, Allura! What if they took Shay? What if they hurt her? What if they think she’s one of us? I should have told her to leave as soon as we found the crystal. Now she’s in danger, and we’re stuck in here, and Lance and Pidge--” His face blanched, and he reached up for a helmet that wasn’t there. “They’re on their own out there. What if the Galra ambushed them, too?”

Allura held up her hands, soothing Hunk as he covered his face with his hands, his breath rattling between his fingers. “I’m sure they’re fine, Hunk. We’re going to get out of this.”

“How?” Hunk looked up at her, tears gathering in the corner of his eyes. He swore and sat down, his back against the bars. “I just—I can’t do this.”

Allura shot a helpless look toward Matt, who was watching Hunk with sympathy. He climbed to his feet, closing his eyes briefly as though feeling lightheaded. Shuffling steps carried him across the cell, and he sat beside Hunk, pulling him into an embrace.

“Just breathe, Hunk,” he said softly. “You’re not alone this time. Just keep breathing.”

Hunk’s fingers dug into the fabric of Matt’s bodysuit as Matt continued whispering reassurances. Allura stood awkwardly a few feet away, feeling like an intruder. Her royal training had given her a great many skills; she could offer condolences or commendations, express gratitude or contrition. On occasion, she’d even been known to speak words of encouragement.

Simple comfort, though… well, people never came to her for comfort. As princess, she was supposed to find practical, feasible solutions. She’d always prided herself on her pragmatism, but sometimes people didn’t need a commander. They just needed a friend.

Fortunately, Matt seemed to have the situation well in hand. Allura’s gaze lingered on his back for a moment before she straightened, squaring her shoulders. She stepped up to the bars, gauging the space between them. It would be a tight fit, but it just might work.

Focusing, Allura began to compress her body. She was out of practice with her shape-shifting abilities, and smaller forms had always been harder to achieve than larger ones, but she would manage. The sensation was a distinctive one, a Quintessential vibration at her core that spread through her like ripples of water. Her physical body folded in on itself, muscles and bones not just sliding against each other, but folding _behind_ each other like tectonic plates at a fault line. Her bodysuit, like most Altean clothing, changed shape with her, conforming automatically to her new body.

The bones of her face were the last to change, her jaw broadening, her hair hardening into a carapace. She flexed her fingers a few times as the change settled into place, then opened her eyes and found Matt and Hunk staring down at her with wide eyes.

“What?” she asked.

Matt lifted a hand, then let it fall to his side. “You’re...an Arusian.”

“Of course. I believe I showed you Altean camouflage before. During the slumber party, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Yeah, you did. I just... It was not this drastic before.”

Smiling, Allura slipped through the bars into the corridor beyond, then reverted back to her normal form. “I’m going to have a look around,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”

She turned and crept away.

“Okay, well that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever witnessed,” Hunk whispered. Matt’s stifled laughter chased her down the tunnel.

* * *

Pidge set the Green Lion down beside the other three and darted for the exit. On the bright side, the Galra hadn’t found the lions yet—or at least hadn’t figured out a way to steal them. Pidge didn’t want to count on their luck holding out, but at least there was something that hadn’t gone wrong. Yet.

As soon as Pidge got ten feet from Green, an energy shield descended around the lion, raising the hairs on the back of Pidge's neck. They summoned their bayard and glanced around the mine shaft. If they’d thought to bring Rover along, they might have been able to scan for Matt, Allura, and Hunk, but the little drone was back on the castle-ship, watching over Coran.

A fine layer of dust covered the ground here—enough to hold footprints, if Pidge was lucky. It might not get them all the way to where the others were, but it should at least point them to the right tunnel.

They started toward the closest lion—Black—but their pace slowed as they noticed movement in the shadows. Pidge squinted into the darkness, hand tightening on their bayard. It had come from the north end of the pit, near the Yellow Lion.

Yellow’s shield was down.

For a moment, Pidge forgot to breathe. Then the shadow moved again, and Pidge threw themself behind the Red Lion, bayard at the ready. _Why_ was Yellow’s shield down? Had the Galra figured out some way to bypass it? Had Hunk managed to escape the Galra and come for help?

Cautious footsteps approached and Pidge tensed, drawing in air through their nose. _Wait for it,_  they thought. _Wait for them to get closer…_

When the footsteps were just on the other side of Red, Pidge threw themself into the open, bayard sparking in anticipation of a fight. But it wasn’t a Galra soldier standing there, yellow eyes wide with shock. It wasn’t Hunk, either, but a species of alien Pidge didn’t recognize with blunt features, thick ridged plates in place of hair, and long, well-muscled arms.

Pidge retreated a step, but kept their bayard out just in case. “Who are you?” they demanded. “What do you want?”

“I am Shay,” the alien said, holding up both hands in a placating gesture. “You...are another paladin of Voltron?”

Pidge narrowed their eyes. Shay must have been a Balmeran, maybe the same one Allura had mentioned over the comms. Though in that case, how had she escaped the Galra? “What do you know about the other paladins?”

“I was helping them,” Shay said, relaxing slightly as Pidge lowered their bayard. “I took them to the crystal, but then my brother Rax, he… He feared that helping outsiders would put us in danger, so he went to the guards.”

“Do you know where they took my friends?”

Shay nodded. “The prison cells. I am on my way there now, but it is fortunate that we should cross paths. We Balmerans are no great warriors.”

“I don’t think _I_ qualify as a great warrior either,” Pidge muttered. “But...if that’s true, why were you up here? What happened to the Yellow Lion’s...” They trailed off as they glanced down the line of lions. Yellow’s shield was back in place, like it had never been gone. “ _What_?”

Frowning, Shay followed Pidge’s gaze. “I loaded the crystal onto your ship. There may be trouble soon, and I thought it best you did not have to drag a crystal behind you as you fled.”

“I mean, that’s a great plan, but… you shouldn’t have been able to get into our lions.”

Shay’s eyes widened in understanding, and she laughed into her hand. “The lion knew me for a friend,” she said, as though it should have been obvious. “So she bid me welcome.”

Pidge shook their head, taken aback as much by Shay’s casual tone as by her words. “Wait— _huh_? Can you, like, talk to the lion or something?”

“Well enough. Your lions communicate much the same way we speak with the Balmera.” Shay smiled, then turned toward one of the tunnels leading off from the main shaft. “I would gladly speak more of this, but your friends are in danger. We should make haste.”

“Right,” Pidge said. They shot one last look at the Yellow Lion, a hundred unanswered questions dancing through their thoughts, then took off running after Shay.

* * *

Twelve hours later, Shiro stood on the observation deck of the _Herald_ , looking down on the planet Yaltin. Instead of the jeweled tones of Lan Trossa, Yaltin was painted in deep burgundy and navy blue, and what few bodies of water Shiro could identify glowed silver-lilac in the sunlight.

Most of Orgul’s troops were gathered by the transports receiving orders, but Keith had received his earlier in a meeting with the senior officers.

The orders were simple: cut down any Yaltian who put up a fight. Show no mercy. Prove that they were an asset to the _Herald_. Outside the ship’s hull, Orgul’s seniority over Keith was slight at best; she could technically still issue orders, but if Keith disagreed, there was little she could do. So apparently she’d decided not to micromanage.

Shiro wasn’t complaining.

The thought of invasion was horrifying enough on its own, but even more so as Shiro began to swipe through the data sheets Orgul’s scouts had compiled about Yaltin and its inhabitants. The Yaltians were a peaceful people, largely unsuited to violence. They subsisted mostly on plants that they farmed or gathered and ate meat only rarely. They had some simple energy weapons that they used to defend against large predators, but no formal military.

“They’re going to get crushed,” Shiro whispered, shutting off his wrist-mounted display. He was going to be sick if he spent any more time looking at Orgul’s battle plan. “There’s no way these people can fight back!”

“That’s what Orgul’s counting on,” Keith said, crossing his arms on the railing that ringed the observation deck. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all the night before. “The army’s going to descend on areas of dense population and wipe them out, then offer a treaty, if you can call it that. Zarkon gets the planet, half the Yaltians get shipped off to mines and labor camps, and Orgul moves on to the next planet, gloating over the fact that she took an entire planet in a day.”

Shiro closed his eyes. “We’re not going to let that happen.”

“Are...” Keith hesitated, glancing sidelong at Shiro. “Do you really think this is the best idea?”

Something cold and ugly closed around Shiro’s throat and he rounded on Keith, struggling to keep his anger in check. “Of course it is. Why are we here, if not to save these people from Zarkon?”

Keith hunched his shoulders and refused to look at Shiro. “I’m not _happy_ about this, you know. You said it yourself—these people don’t stand a chance against Orgul’s army. Let’s say we do convince them to fight back; are we really going to change the outcome? Are we really going to lead a bunch of shrimpy farmers to victory here? Or are we just going to get more of them killed?”

“We...” Shiro hesitated, staring blankly out the window. What if Keith was right? Was a doomed war worth fighting, if surrender would save lives?

He looked down at his metal arm.

_Days of agony. Hunger that never went away. Terror beyond reason, chasing him through his dreams, beating him down until all he saw was despair. The chaos of the Arena, all flashing swords and screams of pain and the biting stench of fresh blood._

Shiro curled his hand into a fist. “There are fates worse than death,” he whispered. He looked up and found Keith watching him with concern. “We have to try, Keith. We have to at least offer the Yaltians our help.”

Keith didn’t answer, but he nodded. Shiro figured that was the best he was going to get. He couldn’t blame Keith for his hesitation. They were fighting a losing battle here. Shiro had known that when they’d set out, but it had never seemed so real as it did now, staring down at a planet facing imminent invasion. The Yaltians had no idea what was coming.

Maybe this was a fight he couldn’t win, but Shiro wouldn’t turn his back on them. He couldn’t.

* * *

Shiro had never been in battle before.

He’d had plenty of training at the Garrison, sure. Hand-to-hand combat in the gym, rifles and handguns at the firing range, aerial combat in the simulators. He’d studied historical battles and drilled small-scale group operations.

And of course he’d had his fair share of combat experience since being captured by the Galra, between the Arena and the training deck he had access to now that he had enlisted.

None of it compared to the nauseating chaos of battle. Keith and Shiro were deployed near the equator with the fifth regiment, which was under Lieutenant Commander Luba’s command. They had a few minutes of relative peace as the army surrounded the city, Keith and Shiro forced to watch the battle preparations from the command ship at Luba’s side.

“My men will soften them up for you,” she said, her lips curled into a savage grin as she looked down on the activity in the hills around a small Yaltian city. Only a few scraggly blue shrubs grew in this region, the rest of the land bare rock or dry soil the color of Galra fur. The army used that to their advantage, keeping low to the ground and gathering behind ridges and in gulleys as they awaited the order to attack. “We’ll wait to see where these vermin flee to, then drop you there to clean up.”

Shiro was going to be sick.

He stared numbly at the city as the Galra troops moved in, watched the bodies pile up in the streets. Minutes rushed by, and before he knew it he was on a dropship with Keith, speeding toward the western edge of the city, where a large number of Yaltians had fled into the hills. The ship hovered a few feet off the ground and Keith jumped out, Shiro following behind. The army hadn’t reached this edge of the city yet, but he could hear screams and bursts of laserfire between the silent buildings.

He’d seen death before, smelled the rot of corpses left for days in the prison cells, watched the light go out of an opponent’s eyes. He’d trained for ten years to join the Galaxy Garrison and defend his crew—and his planet—against enemies both known and unknown.

This was not at all what he had expected.

The dropship pulled out, leaving Keith and Shiro alone. Shiro immediately muted his mic, leaving his earpiece on in case Orgul decided to give them new orders. Keith did the same, then struck out toward the nearby hills.

“I guess we should be happy Orgul didn’t send anyone to keep an eye on us,” Keith muttered, jogging along the path of trampled brush and hard-packed soil. Dolls and hats and clay beads and ruined food littered the ground, all the things the fleeing Yaltians had dropped in their haste.

Shiro grimaced. “I think she’s hoping we’ll get ourselves killed so she can tell Zarkon it was our own fault.”

Keith grunted.

It didn’t take long to see where the tracks were leading. The hills ahead of them were rugged and broken, a number of cave openings dotting the slopes. They would be nearly invisible from above, camouflaged by rockslides, jutting overhangs, and deep shadows. If there was ever a place to parlay with the enemy and plot a secret resistance, that would be it.

Their pace slowed as they approached a large opening, where the widest stream of footprints led. The sunlight didn’t reach far into the cave, which was pleasantly cool and eerily silent. There could be Yaltians lying in ambush anywhere, and with superior numbers and the element of surprise, they would have the upper hand no matter what sort of weapons they wielded.

Shiro glanced at Keith. “We’re not getting anywhere standing around out here,” he said with a shrug, and led the way into the cave, Keith grumbling as he followed.

The cavern cut a winding path into the hillside, sloping steadily downward. Smaller side tunnels split off every so often, but Shiro stuck to the main tunnel, hoping it would lead to an open space where the refugees might have taken shelter. He’d activated his arm to give them light and held it up as they walked, careful not to slip on the loose stones underfoot.

It was impossible to move silently in here, stones always shifting beneath him and skittering away down the slope ahead. The Yaltians would hear them coming for certain, but that meant Keith and Shiro would have equal warning, as long as the Yaltians weren’t already lying in wait.

The tunnel leveled out at last, the low ceiling retreating above them and the narrow passage beginning to widen. They rounded a corner, only to find themselves at a dead end.

It was a small chamber, unnaturally round, like someone had carved it out of the hillside. A few worn carvings marked the walls, but the glow of Shiro’s arm wasn’t enough to make out what they depicted. The wall opposite the entrance was smooth and perfectly vertical, the ceiling arched some ten feet above Shiro’s head.

“What is this?” he asked, stepping toward the back wall with his arm raised to illuminate the carvings.

Keith scoffed. “Who cares? Let’s go.”

Shiro wanted to argue. There were questions waiting to be answered here, carvings that might hold great historical and cultural significance. Commander Holt would have loved to find something like this on an alien planet.

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut, his throat thick with emotion. How long had it been since he’d thought of Sam Holt? How long since he’d dreamed of the look of fear on Matt’s face as Shiro attacked him that first day in the Arena? He’d tried to look for them after Keith freed him. They’d dug through records and memos, but prisoners’ information was kept separate from the ordinary archives, and Keith would have needed to submit an official request for information.

That, of course, would have brought too much attention to the newly-defected Champion and his minder, and Shiro had been forced to accept that his crewmates were still beyond his reach.

“Shiro?” Keith asked.

Shiro turned, forcing a smile. “Sorry. Let’s go.”

They headed for the tunnel, only to find their way blocked by a line of Yaltians. They were a diminutive race, nearly a foot shorter than Keith, with thin limbs and short torsos. Bipedal but with two sets of arms, they looked something like rearing centaurs, especially with the mane of dark hair that ran down their backs.

At a sound from behind, Shiro turned and found a dozen more blunt-faced Yaltians behind them. There were nearly thirty altogether, each of them armed with a slender rifle—inferior to Galra weapons, maybe, but still plenty lethal.

Keith raised his empty hands slowly and glanced at Shiro. “I hope you’ve thought about how to convince them we’re friendly,” he muttered. “Because otherwise we’re both dead.”

* * *

Allura didn’t have to wander far to find the room where the Galra had dumped their equipment. There were no doors in the Balmera, except where the Galra had built metal cages into the tunnels, so she could see the heap of armor from the corridor.

She could also hear the low murmur of voices. She doubted they belonged to Balmerans.

Edging up to the doorway, Allura glanced into the room just long enough to see the pair of guards sitting at a table along the far wall. They seemed to be playing some kind of card game, so they didn’t notice the motion at the door, but the room was far too small and bare for her to think of sneaking in to steal the armor.

She would have to think of something else. A diversion to get the guards out of the room. Maybe--

At a small noise behind her, Allura’s heart skipped a beat. She spun, swearing under her breath, and spotted a pair of Galra rounding the corner. If they saw her and raised the alarm, she was dead.

So she didn’t give them the chance.

Allura broke into a dash, closing the distance between her and the Galra in a flash. The guards turned toward the movement, and the one on the left opened his mouth to shout. Allura kneed him between the legs, then grabbed both Galra by the ear and slammed their heads together.

They dropped to the ground, unconscious. Maybe dead. Allura couldn’t find it in herself to care. She held her breath, listening for motion from the guard room, but it never came. She breathed a sigh of relief, her heart still hammering in her chest, and crouched beside the motionless guards. Tossing one over each shoulder, she hurried to the empty side-chamber she’d passed a dozen paces back and hid them inside. Then, working quickly, she stripped the woman of her armor, adopted a Galra frame, and got dressed.

Moments later, wearing a helmet to cover her ears—she never had figured out how to mimic Galra ears—and carrying a rifle, she strode into the guard chamber. The two Galra playing cards looked up at her.

“I’ve come to relieve you,” Allura said, hoping to stall them long enough to come up with a good lie. Something like, _The captain wants to see you in his office_ , or, _Trouble with the Balmerans. You’re to report to the north tunnel._ It would be easier if she knew how the Galra navigated the tunnels, or whether any of the Galran names she remembered from before the war were still in fashion, or if that would blow her cover.

To her surprise, though, the guards only stretched and glanced at the ticker on the wall. “Look at that,” the one on the left said. “Our shift _is_ over.”

 _"Finally_ ,” the other said, standing and rubbing his neck. He glanced at the empty hallway outside. “Hey, where’s your partner?”

“He had to, um, relieve himself,” Allura said, laughing nervously. “He’ll be along any moment now.”

The guards traded glances, then shrugged and headed for the door. The first raised a hand. “Have fun. Try not to die of boredom.”

Allura laughed weakly, waving after the pair until they disappeared from view. She waited a few more ticks, then darted over to the pile of armor.

* * *

“How much farther is it?” Pidge hissed. Lance had kept up a steady stream of curses since Pidge had landed, but he’d gone quiet a few minutes ago, and Pidge was starting to get worried. Any question they asked was met with a grunt or, if they were lucky, a monosyllabic answer: _Yes. No. Fine._

He was still alive, at least, but the sooner they found the others and got back to the surface, the better. Pidge couldn’t help wondering whether Zarkon had somehow known they were split up and sent his cyborg monster to attack when they were vulnerable, or if this was just really terrible luck.

_Worry about that later._

Up ahead, Shay slowed, gesturing to Pidge to be quiet. She placed her hand on the wall of the tunnel and concentrated for a moment before she spoke to Pidge in a low voice. “The guard station lies just ahead. I sense someone within.”

“Could we sneak past them?”

“Perhaps,” said Shay. “But if they hear us while we free your friends, we will be cornered.”

And the others probably didn’t have their bayards anymore. Pidge grimaced, but stepped in front of Shay. “Better to take care of the guard now. Where is this room?”

“Around the corner on the right. Ten paces.” Shay paused, looking down at Pidge. “Perhaps twenty for you.”

Pidge gave the Balmeran a flat look. “All right. Stay behind me.” They activated their bayard, took a deep breath, then ran around the corner on silent feet. There was only one opening in sight, about twenty feet down the corridor. Through it, Pidge could see a tall figure in Galran armor. Their back was to the door, but Matt and Hunk’s bayards hung from their belt.

Gritting their teeth, Pidge charged in, bayard crackling with electricity.

From behind, Shay’s voice rang out. “Wait!”

The Galra soldier turned and, swearing, dodged backward, narrowly avoiding Pidge’s attack.

“Pidge?”

Pidge froze. “ _Allura?_ ”

Allura removed her helmet—and it _was_ Allura, only purple and eight feet tall. She was already beginning to revert to her normal form, her bone structure changing in a way that made Pidge vaguely queasy.

A smile split Allura’s face as the transformation finished. “Thank goodness you found us.”

“Where are Matt and Hunk?” Pidge asked. “Are they all right?”

Allura nodded, then glanced beyond Pidge to Shay, who remained in the doorway, glancing occasionally down the corridor. “I see you also made it out in one piece.”

Shay offered a weak smile. “My brother told the Galra I was your hostage so that they would release me.”

“I’m glad.” Allura grabbed a bag from the floor beside her and tossed it over her shoulder. “Let’s get back to the others.”

* * *

Shiro raised his hands slowly but otherwise did not move as the Yaltians closed in around him. Beside him, Keith twisted to look at the Yaltians behind him.

“Keith, calm down,” Shiro muttered. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Says you.” Keith was so tense he was practically vibrating, and Shiro doubted he’d be able to keep himself from drawing his sword for much longer. It was time to speed this conversation along.

“Sorry for following you,” Shiro said, trying to keep the strain out of his voice. Fortunately Orgul had sent drones ahead of the army to record and analyze local languages. The translator chips implanted in every Galra soldier’s brain were linked to a central database, so Shiro and Keith would already have access to the data. “We just want to talk.”

The Yaltian at the front of the group, taller than the others by about two inches and holding one of the slender Yaltian rifles in both sets of hands, scoffed. “You come with the ones who slaughter, you follow our people into our last refuge, and you expect us to talk?”

“Um...yes?” Shiro offered a weak smile.

The Yaltian shook their head, jangling the thin copper bangles around each of their four wrists. “Tell us why we should not just kill you now.”

“Because you can’t win against that army out there,” Keith growled. “If you do kill us, then what? They still outnumber you, and they have better weapons.”

A shorter Yaltian lingering at the back of the group whimpered. This one was a lighter shade of orange than the rest, almost light enough to blend in on Earth. They, like the others, wore thin armor made of a material Shiro didn’t recognize, shiny like metal but colored a bright daffodil yellow. Many of the Yaltians had designs painted on their armor, or perhaps worked directly into the metal—or whatever it was—but the basic shape was the same: a close-fitting breastplate, bracers on the arms, tall boots, and armored plates like a skirt around the waist.

The leader looked around, and Shiro surreptitiously followed their gaze. The Yaltians looked frightened and weary. Many faces bore tear tracks through the sweat and dust clinging to their skin.

“You can’t win on your own,” Shiro said, pushing down the voice inside him that said two traitors weren’t going to change the outcome of this battle. “But we want to help.”

“How can we trust you?” asked one of the Yaltians standing behind Shiro and Keith.

Shiro turned his head slightly to look at them. “We haven’t attacked you yet, have we?” He spread his hands. “Look, the Galra out there don’t need to trick you in order to win. You can fight them, maybe kill some, but you don’t know what they can do or how they fight. They’ve been watching you, gathering information. They have every advantage, so… what do you have to lose?”

Some of the Yaltians remained skeptical. Two of the smaller ones who held their rifles less confidently than the rest (children? Shiro wondered, heart sinking at the thought) actually looked hopeful at Shiro’s words.

The rest only looked confused. Confused and scared. They all watched their leader expectantly until they squared their shoulders and nodded once, decisively.

“You will speak with the elders,” the leader said. “Those who survived. They will decide whether or not we will allow you to live.”

“Gee, thanks,” Keith muttered.

Shiro quieted him with a look. “Thank you.”

“You will of course surrender your weapons,” the leader said, gripping their rifles tighter as though in preparation for a fight.

Shiro nudged Keith, who reluctantly handed over his sword. The Yaltian leader turned to Shiro.

“I left my weapons outside,” he said. His arm’s glow may have already made the Yaltians suspicious, but if they didn’t know yet that his arm was dangerous, he wasn’t going to enlighten them. “You can search me if you like.”

The leader gestured for the Yaltian to their left to do so, and Shiro raised his arms as the Yaltian’s light touch ran over his thin armor. Eventually the Yaltian pulled back and nodded to the leader, who frowned at Shiro, no doubt wondering if this was some trick.

They evidently decided not, and gestured for the other Yaltians to head back up the slope. Shiro and Keith marched in the center of the ring, backs prickling from the rifles trained on them. Shiro tried not to think about it. He’d convinced the Yaltians to hear him out. That was a victory, if only a minor one.

“By the way,” he said after a few moments of silence. “My name is Shiro. This is Keith.”

Several Yaltians glanced at Shiro and Keith, then back at their leader. The leader didn’t turn, and at first Shiro thought they were ignoring him. Then, with a sigh, they said, “I am called Deyra, and you would do well to remember me.” Deyra turned then, fixing Shiro with a dark glower that reminded him of the instructors back at the Garrison. “For if you decide to betray us, I will be the one to kill you.”

* * *

Lance was not doing well.

Well. Okay. He was doing pretty _damn_ awesome, all things considered. He was piloting a giant magic lion, alone, against a super fast cyborg wolf thing and he’d survived for—how long had Pidge been gone? Probably a couple thousand ticks. He wasn’t dead, which was really great.

On the other hand…

“Ahh!” Lance blindly slapped at a panel where _another_ alarm had started to blare. He’d lost count of how many different alarms that made. Honestly, he was pretty sure Blue was creating _new_ alarms to set off. Y’know, just in case Lance hadn’t figured out how screwed he was. “Okay. Okay!”

His palm finally hit the right button to silence the alarm, which only left him with a handful of softer, intermittent beeps, the kind that didn’t sound so bad until you’d been listening to them for twenty minutes and were seriously considering taking a pencil to your eardrum to shut the damn things up.

Unfortunately, he was still playing cat-and-mouse (cat-and-dog?) with the robeast, which required at _least_ one hand on the controls, so ear-stabbing was probably off the table for a while.

He heard the familiar crack of something breaking the sound barrier and yanked Blue to the side, narrowly avoiding getting his rump smashed by the robeast as it charged past. Blue bristled with the close call and roared her frustration. (At this point the inside of Lance’s head felt like the beginning of five hundred MGM movies played at millisecond intervals so all the lions’ roars overlapped. Which would have been cool if not for the pounding headache and the fact that he had more important things to worry about than his lion’s bad attitude.)

“C’mon, Blue, keep it together...” Lance zig-zagged between a cluster of buildings and watch towers, hoping the robeast might continue its streak of _obscene_ levels of collateral damage, this time taking out Galra stuff instead of more pieces of Balmera.

At first, Lance had tried to stay airborne, but it didn’t take long to figure out that was a bad idea. Cyborg Wolf Thing? Totally had rocket-feet, because _of course_ it did. And maybe it was a tiny bit slower getting off the ground than Blue was, and a little less maneuverable in the air, but it was plenty fast enough to keep Lance in range of its lasers.

There were no Galra barracks to hide behind in the sky.

Skidding around the corner of the power plant and leaping across the neighboring mine shaft, Lance slapped the side of his helmet. “Hey, _Pidge_? Buddy? How much longer is this gonna take? Cause, uh, Blue’s kinda getting sick of all this running away.”

For an instant, Lance thought no one was going to answer. Which, hey, no hard feelings. Probably tough to chat while fighting Galra. Lance could relate. But also: his lion was a few good hits away from falling apart.

Before he had time to wonder whether or not he should be panicking, the comm crackled to life.

“Don't worry, Lance,” Allura said. “We’re on our way.”

“Allura!” Lance grinned, even as Blue shuddered from another laser blast to the butt. Lance yanked hard on the controls and dodged behind a line of stone spires sticking up from the ground like the ribs in the Elephant Graveyard.

The robeast didn’t even slow, just plowed right through the rock pillars and kept on firing at Lance.

“Sorry,” he muttered to the Balmera as he veered toward the next row of Galra structures. “That’s my bad. That one’s totally on me.”

The next laser hit the ground beneath Blue, lifting her back end off the ground and sending her into a skid that ended with two rows of barracks flattened and three new alarms blaring directly into Lance’s ear.

“Aw, quiznak,” he muttered, squirming against his straps to try to get the right leverage on the controls. He nudged Blue to get her up, but she barely responded, straining feebly and then dropping limp to the ground. He tried again, muttering an Ave Maria, though maybe an Ave Altea might have been more appropriate

He cut off as the robeast let out a roar behind him and _way_ too close for comfort. Lance was glad that at least Blue wasn’t facing the right direction for him to watch death coming for him on four cyborg legs.

“Guys, you might want to hurry it up here.” He jimmied the controls one more time, but Blue still wasn’t responding, and that _damn_ siren right above his left ear was going to get chucked into a black hole if it didn’t shut up in the next three ticks. “I’m not joking guys, Blue’s not responding and I _really_ don’t want to see what this space wolf can do with those Wolverine claws, so if you could help me out? _Please_?”

“Almost there, Lance,” Hunk said. “Two ticks.”

“I don’t know if I _have_ two ticks!”

The crack of a sonic boom made Lance flinch, and he flung his hands over his head, waiting for the inevitable.

When the sound of crunching metal came, however, it was distinctly lacking in paladin-crushing mechanical damage. In fact, Blue didn’t even shiver at the impact, except for a very slight tremor underfoot, like someone had slammed the back door.

Cautiously, Lance pulled his arms away from his head and was met with the sight of a red mechanical paw standing just on the other side of his viewscreen.

“Guys!” Lance cried, heart hammering in his chest as he sagged against his flight harness. “Holy _shit_ , guys. Could you cut it any closer?”

“You know Hunk,” Pidge said, smirk plain in their voice. “Always has to make a dramatic entrance.”

Hunk snorted, and something far away exploded. “Right. Dramatic entrance. That’s me.”

“Well, you did headbutt a giant wolf,” Pidge said. “I mean, who _does_ that? Well, Lance, but he wasn’t very _good_ at it, so I’m not sure it counts.”

“Guys,” Matt snapped. “This is no time to joke around.” He sounded tense, Lance thought, but before he could figure out why all the red lights on Blue’s dashboard started winking out, replaced by happy blues and greens.

Lance’s hands hovered uncertainly over the controls. “Uhhhh, what’s happening?”

“Your lion is healing herself,” Allura said. “Just let her work. We’ll keep the monster distracted until you’re back on your feet. Matt, we could use your help.”

As Red’s paw disappeared from sight—rather reluctantly, Lance noted—Lance stared down at his control panel. How was he supposed to know when his lion was healed? Did he have to _do_ anything, or was Blue cool on her own? What kind of creepy biotech did the Alteans have if their robots could _heal_ themselves? Was there an _actual_ lion somewhere deep down in Blue’s core, keeping her alive? That seemed like animal cruelty.

The Garrison had definitely not had a lecture about self-repairing ships, so Lance just sort of stared at the controls, open-mouthed, until the last red light disappeared. Then, fully expecting something weird to happen, he took up the controls again and urged Blue to her feet.

She stood with only a little bit of protest.

“All _right_!” Lance pumped a fist in the air and turned Blue in a tight circle, just to make sure everything was working the way it was supposed to. There were some groans and some definite displeasure somewhere deep in his mind, but Blue was moving again, and that was nothing short of a miracle.

“Matt!” Pidge shouted, jolting Lance out of his celebration.

He spun and caught sight of the others, some distance away. The Red Lion lay in a small crater in the ground, a cloud of dust billowing around it. Green and Yellow veered toward Red.

As they did, the robeast leaped into the air, rocket paws igniting. There was a moment of almost perfect stillness, the robeast suspended overhead, Matt and Allura’s voices clashing on the comms as both called out in alarm.

Then the Galran engines on the monster kicked in and it shot skyward.

It took Lance several heartbeats to realize it wasn’t coming back down. The robeast zoomed toward the clouds, and Lance followed its trajectory, confusion simmering under the surface—then he saw a flash high up in the sky.

_Uh-oh._

With a little effort, he got Blue airborne, flying after the robeast for all he was worth. “Guys,” he called over the comms. “I think that thing’s heading for the castle-ship.”

Allura’s breath hitched. “ _What_?”

“Oh, no,” Hunk said. “Coran’s up there.”

“We have to stop that thing,” Pidge added.

Lance could feel them all charging after him, all five lions straining for every bit of speed, but it still wasn’t going to be enough. The robeast was just too fast, and it had too much of a head start.

“We’re not going to make it,” Matt whispered.

“No.” Allura’s voice was ragged with emotion, and Lance closed his eyes. “We’re not giving up. We can still make it. We _have_ to make it.”

Lance leaned a little harder on his controls. Blue was already flying dead out, but he gave her a little more power, trying to tease a second wind out of her. Coran was up there, alone and helpless, and Lance was _not_ going to sit by and watch some overgrown mutt use him as a chew toy.

He screamed his frustration, hardly noticing the echoing cries in his ear.

Then things got weird.

* * *

The lions began to change, limbs collapsing in on the body, engines shifting towards the head. The paladins felt the shift in their bones, vibrations radiating up their legs as, for just a moment, the world stood still.

But it was more than the physical change within their lions. They felt a sort of tug at their core, like the voices of the lions but somehow deeper. There were no words to the sensation, just that pull and a sense of absolute _rightness_ , like they were falling back into an old, familiar rhythm, like this—whatever it was—was the easiest thing in the world.

Metal clanged against metal. Pistons fired, clamps locked into place, and energy surged through new connections.

Understanding flooded all five paladins, and it took a moment to realize that it had come from Allura. Lance’s shock burst into the bond like a firecracker, and a surge of elation from Hunk answered.

“Did we just…?” Pidge began.

Lance laughed, a little heady with the thrill of what had just happened. “Holy _shit_.”

Hunk stared down at his controls, his mind already spinning with questions. How did the lions fit together? How did they control something like this? How did the joints fit themselves together so effortlessly? Did the lions know what they were doing? “Oh my god!”

“Voltron,” Allura breathed, and her profound calm—proud, delighted, but still focused—grounded them all. “We’ve done it.”

“Now let’s rescue Coran,” Matt said. His presence within the bond was not immediately identifiable—not the exuberance that Lance brought or the racing curiosity of Hunk and Pidge or the steady command of Allura. Matt was the current that ran underneath the rest, stirring slightly where the others bled into it, but offering little in return besides grim determination.

It was hard to say who spurred them into motion. Allura turned the Black Lion’s eyes— _Voltron’s_ eyes—upward at the same moment Lance and Hunk surged toward the castle. They couldn’t see the distant flash of light; they _should not_ have been able to see where they were going, their cockpits now Voltron’s feet, their lions’ heads immobile and staring down toward the Balmera’s surface.

Maybe they saw through the Black Lion’s eyes, or through Allura’s, or maybe Allura saw and through the bond told the others how to move.

They were moving. That was what mattered. They were chasing the Galra monstrosity, _gaining_ on the beast. Matt brought the right arm around, a laser charging within Red’s mouth, and opened fire at Allura’s command.

The beast tumbled end-over-end, howling in a way that tugged at the paladins, a pain that vanished as quickly as it had come. When the beast righted itself, it was no longer focused on the castle, but rather on Voltron. Dead eyes stared back at Allura and the beast began to fall, gathering speed as it neared. The sight of it made Lance flinch, but his fear diffused through the bond, fizzling out as the others answered with silent reassurance.

As the beast neared, Pidge twisted around, their hand reaching out to a new monitor that had appeared to the side of the dashboard. They didn’t stop to think about what they were doing or how they knew to do it, just tapped out a sequence that summoned a shield.

The Galra beast slammed against the shield, the impact thudding through all five lions as the beast fell away. It recovered quickly and circled below them, coming up on the right side and opening fire on the Red Lion. Voltron couldn’t turn fast enough to block the laser and Matt grunted, his teeth rattling with the impact.

“We’re still not fast enough,” Allura said. “That monster is more maneuverable than Voltron.”

Matt fired back at the beast, but his shots flew wide as it dropped down below Voltron’s feet. Its claws sank into the Yellow Lion, yanking Voltron down and twisting them around. Hunk screamed, Lance swore, and Pidge braced themself against the dashboard.

“We’ve gotta do something,” Lance said. “ _Fast_.”

Pidge aimed their laser at the beast and shot twice in quick succession. The beast snarled at them, but released Yellow and retreated. “At least we’ve got its attention,” Pidge offered.

Claws dug into Voltron’s right shoulder, dug a gash along their back. The paladins twisted, trying to line up a shot on the monster, but it was just too fast. By the time they realized it was coming up behind them, it had already passed and come back at another angle.

If this kept up, Voltron was going to be ripped apart.

Panic blossomed in the bond. It started with Hunk, then burrowed into Pidge’s chest. Allura’s confidence wavered, and then the others lost their grip on the fragile hope that was sustaining them. Their thoughts flitted toward Coran, waiting for them up in the castle, and Pidge lashed out at the beast. They couldn’t give up. They _had_ to find a way.

The beast’s claws pierced Voltron’s side, but it kicked off before they could retaliate.

In the Yellow Lion’s cockpit, something changed. A panel opened up below the dashboard, glowing brightly. Hunk stared at it, trying to figure out why the shape of it looked so familiar—a glowing circle surrounding an indentation with a deeper cavity on each end. It looked like something was supposed to fit in there, something like…

Hunk summoned his bayard, then grunted as the Galra monster made another pass at Voltron.

“Hey, guys?” Hunk said. “I think my lion just got an idea.”

He didn’t have to say anything more; the others understood enough.

Pidge brought up the shield in time to catch the beast’s next attack, though they grunted with the effort. “Whatever you’re gonna do, you’d better do it soon.”

“Right.” With a deep breath, Hunk plugged his bayard into the dashboard and twisted. A jolt ran through the lion and raced up through the leg into Voltron’s core, coalescing on their shoulder as a massive cannon.

Lance whistled. “That might help.”

“Let’s hope it does,” Matt said.

“Pidge,” Allura said. “Give us some space.”

Pidge nodded and _heaved_ with all their might, shoving the beast back with their shield. It tumbled through the air, limbs flailing. Hunk didn’t wait for Allura’s command before he let loose with the cannon. Hundreds of laser missiles spewed out of the cannon’s mouth, corkscrewing through the air toward the beast, which tried to flee.

It dodged the first few missiles, but there were far too many, and it was far too big a target. The first missile caught it in the shoulder, the next in the chest.

And, as it turned out, despite the creature's speed and agility, its armor wasn’t much to brag about. It began to crack, shrieking as each missile found its mark. Chunks of armor fell away and the beast screamed, a sound of agony and rage as it twisted and thrashed in a last, desperate attempt to escape.

The paladins looked on in mingled horror and relief as the monster twitched once more, then stilled. Then it fell away and crashed into the ground below.

For a moment all was still. Disbelief, joy, and triumph radiated from one paladin to the next, mixing together in a giddy whirlwind of victory. Beneath it all, though, was a darker current, bitter and mournful.

“Well done, paladins,” Allura said, breathless and grinning. “Let’s get back to the ship and get the crystal installed.”

* * *

An hour later saw the Castle of Lions towering over the central mine shaft, its towers glowing with the clean blue light of a new, healthy crystal. Coran was safely resting inside a cryo-replenisher, the castle running self-diagnostics to identify lingering effects of the corrupted crystal Sendak had implanted.

The other paladins had split off to deal with the Galra sentries remaining in the mines and the handful of soldiers left behind to watch over the operation. Only Hunk had returned by the time Allura emerged from the castle to meet with the Balmerans, and she found him speaking with Shay and her grandmother, Mir.

“Princess Allura,” Mir said as Allura approached. The elderly Balmeran woman bowed low, then clasped Allura’s hand in both her own. “You all have done us a great service. You all have our gratitude.”

Hunk raised his hands, waving them nervously. “Oh, no need to thank us. We’re paladins. Helping people is basically our job.”

Shay smiled into her hand. “Even so, my people owe you a debt. You gave us back our freedom, and you spared our Balmera further suffering at the hands of the Galra.” She craned her neck to look up at the sky, streaked now with crimson clouds as evening approached. “We are fortunate that you arrived when you did.”

Hunk didn’t seem to know what to say to that, scratching the back of his head sheepishly and grinning back at Shay.

Another Balmeran broke off from the small group gathered at the mouth of the mines and moved toward them. He hesitated a short distance away, and suddenly Allura recognized Shay’s brother Rax.

He looked at Allura, then at Hunk, then ducked his head.

“Rax,” Shay said, sounding more surprised to see him than Allura was. “I...”

“I must apologize,” Rax said, the words coming out in a rush. “The Galra have ruled out people for so long I feared we could never defeat them. I feared our fate should we anger the Galra, and in my fear I came near to crushing our one hope for freedom.” He glanced away, color rising in his cheeks. “We owe you much.”

Allura smiled kindly at him, then crossed to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I understand, Rax. You were trying to protect your family. I cannot fault you for that.”

The smile he gave her in return was weak, and he murmured an excuse as he withdrew. Allura watched him go, heart aching. It would take time for the Balmerans to heal as a people, but they were free now, and that was more than they’d had before. Allura had hope that they would grow stronger from their suffering. They were a hardy people, and well equipped now that they had access to the Galra’s supplies. If Zarkon tried to retake this Balmera, the people would not go down quietly.

“Anyway,” Hunk said, clearly unnerved by the loaded silence that had fallen over the group. “We’re just about finished up in the mines. Pidge is monitoring the bio...life...” He shook his head. “The BLIP-tech sensors you gave them, and Matt and Lance were teaming up to take out the last pocket of resistance.”

“Excellent.” Allura smiled, but it faltered as she noticed the pensive look on Hunk’s face. “What’s wrong?”

He looked up at her, frozen like a mouse caught in a predator’s stare. “Nothing,” he said. “I just...” He fiddled with his bayard, avoiding Allura’s gaze. “Did you feel something when we killed the monster?”

Allura’s chest tightened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean like regret. Pain. Like… I don’t know.” He looked up at her, his brow furrowed. With a guilty glance at the Balmerans talking nearby, he lowered his voice. “Do you think that thing used to be someone Matt knew? Someone like Simsill?”

 _Yes,_ Allura thought. _In fact, I’m almost certain of it_. She’d felt Matt’s hesitation after they’d formed Voltron. He’d seen the battle through out of loyalty to the team and worry for Coran’s safety, but he had been far more subdued than the other humans. More than that, she knew Zarkon. She knew how he thought. And she suspected she knew what he was trying to do.

But of course she couldn’t say that to Hunk. He had enough to worry about already; they all did. Adding her own fears to that would be counter-productive.

She smiled at him, trying her best to be reassuring. “I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “Only Matt really knows the answer to that. If he did know them, I’m sure he’ll tell us when he’s ready. Until then, try not to worry about it.”

* * *

Allura knelt on the ground beneath the castle-ship, her hands pressed against the surface of the Balmera. She felt the eyes of the gathered Balmerans on her as she began the ritual her father had taught her. It came back to her more quickly now, after performing the ritual down in the mines when she’d harvested the crystal for the Castle of Lions.

“Princess?” Shay asked hesitantly. The young Balmeran stood a few feet away, closer than any of her people but Mir. The other paladins stood beside her, watching Allura with just as much confusion. “What are you doing?”

“Alteans used to perform a ritual whenever they harvested a crystal from a Balmera,” she explained, breathing deeply as she reached inward toward the bright spot at her center that was her Quintessence. “We would give the Balmera some of our own Quintessence to replace what we took and to hasten the birth of a new crystal. The Galra have neglected that ritual, and this Balmera has suffered for it. I mean to do whatever I can to undo that damage.”

“By yourself?” Matt asked. There was something in his voice that made Allura turn to him. Deep fatigue marked his face as he knelt and placed a hand on the ground. He grimaced, looking close to being sick. “How much can one person do?”

Allura only smiled. She had ten thousand years of Quintessence bottled up inside her, a typhoon waiting to be unleashed. The glow of the castle-ship’s engines beating down on her shoulders amplified her own energy, whipping it up into a living thing that itched to spread and grow. She didn’t know if it would be enough to fully restore this Balmera, but it was a good start.

She shut out the voices whispering around her and closed her eyes. Focused only on her Quintessence and the Balmera beneath her hands.

When she opened the gates, her Quintessence surged through, pouring through her hands into the ancient creature below. The reaction was much stronger than she’d expected, and she barely managed to stop the flow before she gave away every ounce of her own life energy.

It was over in an instant, leaving Allura drained. She swayed, and Matt darted forward to catch her as she fell. She leaned on him, smiling at the look of wonder on his face. Around them, the Balmera glowed faintly, a few small crystals gathering on the surface like dew. Allura could sense the creature now, a living, breathing thing pulsing through her bones. Even the scraggly brown plants dotting the surface looked a little more lively.

The whispers of the Balmerans multiplied, and many of them pressed a hand against the stone. They laughed and cheered and shouted to others around them. Allura even saw a few tears quietly brushed away.

For her part, Allura only smiled, allowing Matt to help her up and back into the castle. She would need to rest after this, but she didn’t mind. They’d finally made a difference today—a real, tangible difference. They’d driven out the Galra and undone a bit of Zarkon’s damage. It was a small step, but an important one. It marked the beginning of Voltron’s fight to reclaim the universe.

That was something she could be proud of.


	12. The Tipsy Mordyte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... The paladins formed Voltron and freed the Balmera from Galra control. Meanwhile Keith and Shiro arrived at the planet Yaltin. They were unable to stop the initial attack, but have made contact with the survivors and hope to form an alliance to thwart Commander Orgul's plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of minor trigger warnings for this chapter:  
> 1) Alcohol/underage drinking. A few conversations take place in a bar, and Lance (who is just shy of 18) buys himself a drink.  
> 2) Misgendering (very briefly) in a flashback to before Pidge came out.
> 
> In other news, with this chapter we're officially past the last of the parallels to the plot of the show, which means things are about to heat up. Enjoy~!

Hunk and Shay sat atop the Yellow Lion watching the sun rise.

“I could watch a thousand suns rise and it would still be a wondrous thing,” Shay whispered, a smile lighting her eyes as dawn crept across the land. Hunk had to agree with Shay; sunrises on the Balmera were way more impressive than anything he’d seen on Earth. It had been about a week since they’d freed Shay’s people from the Galra. The Balmera was healing quickly, its surface glittering with new crystals, the reddish soil now spotted with blue and green sprouts.

It was roaming again, too. Apparently healthy Balmera roamed across several solar systems, feeding on pockets of Quintessence that sometimes escaped from planets and stars, though this one had been weakened to the point that it had fallen into orbit around a small star in an uninhabited solar system. Solar flares had sustained it—barely—but thanks to Allura’s ritual, it was once more on the hunt. Shay and her grandmother Mir believed this would keep the Galra from returning, since it was difficult to track a migrating Balmera.

In any case, they’d spent most of the last week in perpetual darkness, the stars overhead continually shifting as they passed from one solar system to another. Every so often they passed close enough to a star to get a sunrise, though more often than not these suns only gave as much light as a full moon. The day would last for five or six hours before the Balmera moved on.

Right now they were passing as close to a star as they ever had, and the sky already burned a dozen shades of orange though the sun hadn’t yet crested the horizon. Hunk had a feeling they were going to spend most of the day inside, or else burn their retinas out in the blazing sunlight, but there was no rush to find shelter.

He leaned back on his hands, watching the wonder play across Shay’s face. A week aboveground, four sunrises and countless hours spent watching the constellations change, and she still looked at it all the way—well, the way Hunk looked at Altean technology. When life handed you something so far beyond the ordinary, it took a while for the novelty to wear off.

“I’m glad you get to see this,” Hunk said, turning his eyes back to the horizon.

Shay hummed contentedly and leaned back, her shoulder brushing against Hunk’s. “You are leaving today, are you not?”

“Yeah. Coran and Allura are running the last few tests now.”

“I wish you could stay,” Shay admitted. “I know you have important work to do. I know there are other planets out there that need your aid, but… I will miss you.”

Hunk closed his eyes, hoping Shay didn’t see that she was saying exactly what Hunk had been thinking since Allura told them they would be leaving. He knew he wouldn’t actually stay, when it came down to it. He was a paladin of Voltron. His friends needed him. It was just that this last week had been so peaceful. No battles, no crushing responsibilities. Lots of hard work, of course; the Balmerans had a lot to do to rid their home of the Galra’s destruction.

But he was happy, happier than he’d been since leaving Earth.

“Maybe we’ll see each other again.” Hunk laughed at a sudden thought. “You know, with all the crazy stuff that’s been happening, we might need another new crystal in a couple of weeks.”

Shay smothered a laugh. “Perhaps you could also visit when there is _not_ an emergency?”

“Sure, sure.” Hunk grinned at the rising sun. “That sounds nice, too.”

* * *

“I think that ought to do it, Princess,” Coran said, smacking the top of the newly-installed control panel. “We’re back in working order, at least up here on the bridge.”

Allura smiled at him, straightening her spine so her fatigue wouldn’t show. Although it had been a week since she’d healed the Balmera, she wasn’t yet back to full strength. If Coran had his way, she wouldn’t be on her feet at all, which she found especially ironic from someone who’d recently been blown up and had to spend three days in a cryo-replenisher.

“Thank you, Coran,” she said, forcing a smile. “Why don’t you go rest while I have the paladins prepare for departure?”

He turned toward her, arching an eyebrow in that infuriatingly judgmental way he had. She swore the man’s eyebrows had a will of their own sometimes. “Don’t you think _you_ should be the one to rest, Princess? You haven’t recovered from that reckless little stunt you pulled while I was out.”

Allura crossed her arms, never mind it made her look like a child throwing a tantrum. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

Coran’s left eyebrow rose to match his right, both of them hovering somewhere near his hairline. It really wasn’t fair he could do that. Allura thought she might be able to order the paladins around better if she’d mastered the art of expressive eyebrows.

“Oh?” Coran said. “You don’t remember the way you tried to heal an entire Balmera on your own? Ah, maybe I misheard. It was the Galra who healed it, was it? Those darn Galra, waiting for me to close my eyes so they could pull a fast one on me.” Coran brought a fist down on the console. “Fripping quilzaps.”

Allura rolled her eyes. “Don’t be like that, Coran. You know perfectly well I had Quintessence to spare.” She gave him a hard look from the corner of her eye that made him stroke his mustache nervously. “You ought to have died in that explosion—don’t try to deny it. You’re only alive because of your Quintessential reserves.”

Coughing into his hand, Coran turned his attention to the digital display over the control panel. The last few diagnostic scans were still running, but Coran began reviewing the rest of them, some of them for the third time.

“Core systems seem to be running fine,” he said. “With as much power as Sendak drew from his crystal, it’s likely some of that corruption has bled into the system. Hunk and I replaced whatever we could, but we’ve run out of Q-conduit. I’m keeping some of the nonessential systems powered down until we can repair them.”

Allura knew he was avoiding the topic, but considering how close she was to finding somewhere quiet to take a nap, she let it slide. “Which systems are still in need of repair?”

Coran called up a new file and began to read off a list. “Cameras—the security archives were corrupted, too. I asked Pidge to see what they could salvage, but we may just have to wipe the records. What else… Training deck, laundry system, AI, food goo production, aaaaand waste disposal.”

“Waste disposal?” Allura wrinkled her nose. “You don’t consider that an essential system?”

“In the long term, certainly, but with just the six of us, it will be a month before we fill up the waste containment tanks. We’ll run out of food _long_ before we have to worry about sanitation.”

Allura scowled at him, and he wilted a little.

“Oh. Right. The Balmerans provided us with a bit of food, mostly cave roots and, er, insects.” He held up both hands before Allura could object to the notion of eating bugs. “Not to worry, Princess. Hunk and Lance gathered a fair amount of auxiliary foodstuffs from Arus before we left. Altogether we have enough to keep us fed for about a week. Though it might be a good idea to find a spaceport and resupply before then.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Allura said, suppressing a shudder. She’d had Mir’s cave bug soup once already, and though Allura was much too tactful too say anything, she’d thought it a poor trade for the communicator she’d given the Balmerans, which would let them contact Voltron should they need help again in the future. “Call the paladins together. We leave in an hour.”

* * *

Pidge sighed as they left yet another supply room empty-handed. They’d checked everything on the ninth floor now, with no luck. The castle-ship had a lot of spare parts, but portable BLIP-tech scanners were not part of that stockpile. Maybe they just didn’t exist.

“I guess that would make sense,” they said to Rover, who bobbed along at their shoulder. “If they had anything like that, why wouldn’t it already be in our armor, right? It’s not like it’s _convenient_ to have to drop those big bulky scanners all over the planet.”

To be honest, Pidge had been fascinated by the tech since Allura had told them about it. Biothermal Life Indicator Point Technology, or as Pidge called it, BLIP-tech, was much more advanced than anything they’d seen on Earth. It made sense, from a certain perspective. Aliens didn’t all have the same physiology. They probably had wildly different body temperatures, heart rates… maybe even electromagnetic fields or radiation signatures. The Altean scanners monitored all four, and also included seismic sensors, audio-visual scanners, and, if Pidge wasn’t mistaken, psychic sensors, to identify lifeforms of all species, as well as animate, inorganic objects like the Galra sentry bots.

The paladins had used the technology to track down the last of the Galra hiding in the mines, but only after deploying a half dozen sensors, each two hundred pounds and almost as tall as Pidge themself. Pidge figured it might come in handy to be able to do the same sort of thing with just their armor. But of course it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“I guess I’m just gonna have to reverse-engineer it and see if I can make it more portable. What do you think, Rover?”

The little drone chirped enthusiastically, and Pidge grinned, turning back toward the prep room where they all stored their armor. Halfway to the elevator, their shoe hit something small and hard. It skidded away, rasping against the metal floor panels as Pidge hissed in pain and cursed Hunk for leaving his tools lying around. This was the third time this week Pidge had tripped over an alien wrench.

...Except when they looked down, they didn’t find a wrench.

“What the heck?” Pidge bent down and picked up the knife, turning it over in their hands. The blade was short, sharp, and polished to a shine, the silvery metal nicked and scratched. The hilt was almost as long as the blade itself, altogether about twelve inches. An unfamiliar symbol was etched into the blade near the grip. “That’s...definitely not Altean.”

Frowning, they picked it up and showed it to Rover, who remained oddly silent. Pidge’s frown deepened and, setting aside thoughts of BLIP-tech, they headed for the bridge. Allura and Coran were there when they arrived, and both Alteans waved as Pidge entered.

“Perfect timing, Pidge,” Allura said. “We were just about to call everyone together.”

“Cool,” Pidge said, distracted. “Have you ever seen this before?”

They held out the knife and Allura took it, her eyes widening. “This is a Galra blade. Where did you find it?”

“Down by the wormhole generator just kind of… lying on the ground. Do you think maybe Sendak dropped it?”

Allura opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked up at Pidge, brow furrowed in thought. “It’s possible. Would you mind if I hold onto this for the time being?”

They shrugged. “Sure. Not like I’m gonna need it. My bayard’s _way_ more useful.”

Humming a distracted sort of agreement, Allura turned the dagger over in her hand, her thumb passing over the inscription. Pidge wondered if she could read it, and resolved to get back to work on their translation software—right after they figured out portable BLIP-tech.

* * *

Shiro wished he could say he was surprised by the precautions the Yaltians took in arranging the meeting with their elders, but the truth was he couldn’t blame them. Their planet was under attack, and two of the invaders had charged into their sanctuary. Honestly, Shiro was grateful to be allowed this audience at all.

Deyra and the other warriors led Shiro and Keith through a maze of caverns. Once or twice Shiro thought he recognized a branching path, like they were going in circles, but he couldn’t be certain. All he knew was that he would never find his way out without the Yaltians’ help—nor would he ever find his way back to the room Deyra stopped at, assuming they let him leave.

The room was obviously hand-made, a small box cut out of the stone, a metal door at the only entrance. There was no furniture inside the room, just a small metal ring affixed to the back wall. Shiro stared at it for a long moment, fighting down his panic.

This was a cell, not unlike the one he’d spent nine months in before Keith rescued him from the Arena. Shiro couldn’t say if it was meant to hold Yaltians or some kind of animal, though it had an air of disuse to it, a dusty, dead quality that smelled more of mildew than excrement or blood.

Hopefully the Yaltians weren’t planning on changing that today.

Deyra and five other guards remained with Keith and Shiro in the cell, rifles held at the ready. The other guards waited outside, gathered around the door as a living barrier. A few short minutes later, four more Yaltians joined them in the cell.

These individuals were thinner and more hunched than the soldiers, their flat faces creased with wrinkles and their orange skin dulled with age. One held a cane in their right hands, another watched Shiro through milky white eyes. These four, like the younger Yaltians, were genderless, their faces smooth and hairless, all four dressed in identical blue tunics and rope sandals.

Keith tensed as they entered, the door shutting behind them. Deyra and their guards pressed closer around Shiro and Keith, while the elders gathered on the opposite side of the cell.

“You come offering aid,” said the elder with the cane, “or so I hear.”

Shiro bowed to the elders. He didn’t know if that was a familiar gesture to their people, but it seemed they deserved some sign of respect. “You hear correctly. We--”

The elder with milky eyes held up a hand. “Hush. We will hear you speak momentarily. First you must listen to us.”

The third elder, whose mane of graying hair was braided down their hunched back like a frayed rope, cocked their head to the side and studied Shiro. “You are of an unfamiliar race to us, and _you_ \--” They pointed a shaking finger at Keith-- “belong to the very people who even now slaughter our children in the streets.”

Shiro cringed, and Keith balled his hands into fists.

The fourth elder, nearly bald, with skin freckled with dark spots, said nothing. They merely studied the strangers with keen eyes that flashed green in the lantern light. There was something unnerving about that gaze, something that made Shiro wonder if coming here had been the best idea.

“You understand our hesitation,” said the first elder, waving their cane as though to emphasize their point. “Our people are dying. We would of course welcome a sincere offer of aid, but we fear you mean to betray us, lure us all to our deaths. Why should we trust you?”

“We have heard your arguments,” the milky-eyed elder said. “Yet even in that you try to bully us into obeying you.”

Shiro frowned. “When did--?”

The third elder clicked their tongue. “ _Hush_. Deyra spoke of you.” Shiro glanced at Deyra. They hadn’t left Shiro’s sight since the conversation at the carved chamber deep in the caves. When they could have spoken to the elders, he didn’t know. “Your character is clear to us, strangers, and I have already made my decision. I will not ally with one such as you.”

Shiro bristled, but held his tongue. The bald elder glanced at the one who had just spoken and frowned, but did not argue the point. Shiro looked from one elder to the next, waiting for more accusations. When none came, he drew in a deep breath.

“May I speak?”

As one, the elders nodded.

“I understand your suspicion,” Shiro said slowly, choosing his words with care. “You suffered a great tragedy today, and you don’t want to lose more of your people. I get that. When I said you couldn’t fight the Galra, I didn’t mean it as a threat.”

He paused, glancing at Keith, who stared blankly back.

“The Galra are a powerful and ruthless enemy. Keith and I can’t stop them on our own. We came to you to ask for your help as much as we came to offer ours. We know this enemy. We can help you drive them back.”

He watched the elders, hoping for some sign that he was getting through to them, but they all stared back at him with unreadable expressions. To the sides, Deyra and their soldiers looked similarly unmoved.

“Why?”

Shiro turned toward the elder with the cane. “What?”

“If we assume you to be telling the truth, you are risking your lives for people you do not know. I would like to know why.”

Shiro opened his mouth, then hesitated. There were a great many things he _could_ say, grand, noble things that sounded right and might reassure the Yaltians. Things that would make him sound like a hero, a liberator.

Only Shiro didn’t feel like a hero.

His shoulders slumped, and he spread his arms, giving the elders a weak smile. “Honestly?” he asked. “I’m just tired of watching as the people around me suffer.”

He felt Keith’s gaze burning into the back of his head, but he didn’t turn. Instead, he kept his eyes on the elders, waiting for more interrogation, or perhaps simply condemnation. He wanted to help. He _would_ help, as long as the Yaltians didn’t kill him. He would fight the Galra alone if he had to, whatever the cost. He was done standing aside.

The bald elder was the first to nod, drawing the eyes of the others. No words were spoken, but a silent argument seemed to pass between the elders, faces betraying anger or weariness or hope. One elder gestured widely with their cane, another stared hard at Shiro and stroked their chin.

Sudden realization struck Shiro. “You’re telepathic.”

The blind elder raised an eyebrow in his direction. “This one has keen eyes.”

The bald elder’s eyes flicked toward Deyra, who suddenly stood up straighter and nodded. Deyra turned to Shiro. “You are correct, stranger. All Yaltian elders may speak with one another at a distance and without spoken word. Not all our people have this gift, but many do.”

“Including you?” Shiro guessed. It would explain how Deyra had passed along word of their initial encounter with Shiro and Keith.

Deyra ducked their head. “Yes. We have heard from our kin in other places, learned of the slaughter in our other cities. The elders have been working to warn those who have not yet been attacked, that they might find shelter before the same tragedy befalls them.” Sharp, dark eyes pierced Shiro. “All acknowledge we cannot fight this enemy alone.”

Shiro drew in a quick, startled breath. “Does that mean you’ll let us help?”

Deyra glanced at the elders, and Shiro followed their lead. The bald elder nodded, followed shortly by the blind elder and the one holding the cane, though they seemed less certain about the decision. That left only one elder, the one who had already made up their mind. They scowled at the other elders, then jabbed a finger in Shiro’s direction. “You,” they said, “had better not be lying to us.”

* * *

Lance couldn’t say he was exactly thrilled to be sent on the supply run, but there were worse chores to get stuck with. Like scrubbing toilets, for instance, or cleaning inside the cryopods. Besides, Lance hadn’t had any specific plans for the day, and visiting an alien spaceport might be cool.

(Also, Allura and Coran had bullied each other into staying behind to rest, and Hunk and Pidge wanted to do some modifications on the lions. Which meant there was already a majority ruling in favor of Lance and Matt heading down to the surface.)

They took their lions for the cool factor (or, you know, just in case there was trouble; whatever got Allura off his back), and set down just outside the settlement. The spaceport was located on a tiny moon in the middle of nowhere. _Technically_ it was inside the Galra empire, but Lance seriously doubted Zarkon cared about the intergalactic equivalent of the north pole.

Seriously, aside from this place, the most interesting thing visible on the castle’s scanners was a planet that seemed to literally be on fire. There wasn’t a habitable planet for at least fifty light-years.

Which begged the question why anyone decided to put an alien mall all the way out here, but hey. Lance wasn’t one to nitpick. Growing up, he'd had to drive twenty miles to the nearest Target, and when wormholes were involved fifty light-years wasn’t that much farther than twenty miles. Right?

There was a rough-and-tumble sort of vibe to the spaceport, which was populated by big, burly, grumpy aliens with knives and small, shifty, angry aliens with laser guns. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone to start a fight (so they could join in), and more than a few suspicious stares were directed at Lance and Matt as they entered the city...market...junk heap…whatever this place was. Lance couldn’t begin to guess what was for sale and what was waiting for the garbage truck to come haul it away.

Matt’s steps slowed, and Lance wrapped an arm around his shoulders, leaning over to whisper in his ear. “Relax, bud. It’s all about confidence. Watch this.”

Straightening up, Lance sauntered past a group of aliens smoking some kind of cigar or something. He fired off finger guns at them, then winked at a feminine-looking alien butcher. (Okay, the blood splatter on her apron was _kind of_ a turn-off, but if he’d met her outside work he would have been interested.)

Halfway through Lance's attempt at charming a pair of aliens dressed like space-pirates (complete with mechanical leg and bright red feathered alien-parrot-lizard-beetle...thing), Matt yanked hard on the back of his armor and dragged him down the street.

“I’ll call you!” Lance shouted at the space pirates. Never mind that he didn’t have their numbers, and they didn’t have cell phones. Shrugging off Matt’s hand, Lance glowered at him. “Way to ruin my game.”

Matt’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t comment, which was probably a good thing. Lance was big enough to admit he’d been off lately. Aliens had different customs; obviously his old pickup lines weren’t going to do the trick. He had to get out there, chat with the ladies, cozy up to the dudes, buy the other folks a drink or two. That was the only way he was ever going to master the art of picking up hot aliens.

“Let’s just get what we came for, okay?”

Lance sighed, but gave in. Coran had been pretty graphic about what sorts of trouble the corrupted crystal residue might cause, and Lance _really_ didn’t need his alien smart house trying to kill him.

It took a bit of poking around (and Matt dragging Lance away from a bar called the Tipsy Mordyte because, _You’re underage, Lance._ Turned out Matt was actually twenty-two, even though Lance would have sworn on his bisabuela’s grave he wasn’t a day over eighteen.) but they eventually found a shop selling Q-conduit. (Fortunately Matt knew what that was, because it sounded to Lance like something you stuck in your ear, and he doubted Allura would be pleased with him if he spent her money on alien cotton swabs.) Coran had provided them with old Altean currency—pink and purple bills called crowns—along with a variety of spare parts that could be sold on the off-chance ten-thousand-year-old currency was no good.

Yeah, Lance wasn’t betting on the Altean crowns being worth much.

So he was pretty shocked when it turned out Altean items were hot stuff in the collectors’ world. Apparently wiping out a planet made artifacts hard to find, and wiping out a planet that had ancient ties to almost every _other_ planet made for a thriving black market.

It took some time to find someone interested in Altean things, but the detour was well worth the effort when they traded five one-hundred crown bills for fifty thousand GAC (Galra Authorized Currency, because apparently even smugglers and pirates survived on Galra dollars).

Now, granted, Lance wasn’t really sure how crowns _or_ GAC compared to US dollars in terms of buying power, but considering the mechanic who’d given them the tip on Altean collectors items had only wanted twenty thousand for everything on Matt’s list, Lance was going to go ahead and say this had been a pretty good deal. Especially when they got another ten thousand GAC for the spare parts—sorry, _Altean artifacts—_ that the mechanic had only valued at fifteen hundred. Apparently alien spark plugs were a collector’s item. Who knew?

All told it took about an hour to buy a metric shit-ton (to use the scientific measure) of Q-conduit and other parts and load it into their lions.

When they’d finished, Lance sent a longing look back at the spaceport. “I guess we should get back to the castle...” he said, leaning heavy on the forlorn moping and giving Matt his best puppy eyes.

Matt opened his mouth, glanced at Lance, then shrugged. “I don’t see why we can’t relax for a little while.” Lance’s jaw must have hit the floor, because Matt flushed and held up his hands. “I mean, Coran wasn’t expecting us back for another hour, right? Everyone else is relaxing. Why can’t we?”

“Matt!” Lance grabbed him by the shoulders. “I love you.”

“O...kay?”

Lance spun before Matt had a chance to say anything else and sprinted off into the crowd.

Ten minutes later found him seated at the bar of the Tipsy Mordyte twirling a glass of...well, whatever it was, it smelled disgusting. The menu was in an alien language that his translator only translated shoddily, even when the bartender rattled off the list out loud, and nothing lined up with the handful of drinks Lance knew by name. So he’d ordered something at random.

The bartender stared at him, apparently surprised by his choice. “You’re a brave one, are ya?”

“Well, you know.” Lance buffed his fingernails on his chest and waggled his eyebrows at the man. “I _am_ a paladin of Voltron.”

“Voltron?” the bartender snorted. “You still let your parents tell you bedtime stories, kid?”

Lance deflated a little at that. It wasn’t that he’d expected a big celebration or anything, but it was kind of disappointing that there were people out there who thought Voltron was some old fairy tale. Whatever happened to the legends? What ever happened to ‘defenders of the universe’? How was Lance supposed to build a fanbase and woo hot aliens if no one believed him when he said he was a hero?

When his drink arrived, Lance knocked it back in a single shot. It tasted like earwax, sriracha, and dry ice, and the way it burned on the way down had him coughing up a lung.

“They make ‘em strong here,” said a soft voice in his ear.

Lance looked up into the face of an angel.

Or, fine, just a really hot alien. She looked more human than most of the people here, which was to say she had arms that were a little too long to look natural, a neck like a giraffe (but a really _pretty_ giraffe), pointy elf ears, and fleshy tendrils in place of hair. She _also_ had soft golden skin and the most gorgeous violet eyes Lance had ever seen, and was wearing a little blue crop-top that made him momentarily forget what words were.

“Uh…. Hey— _hello._ ” He flashed her his best smile, and she giggled into her hand. “The name’s Lance.”

“Hey,” said the alien girl, taking a seat beside him. “You okay?”

Lance blinked, glancing down at his empty cup. “What, the drink? Psshaw.” He waved his hand a little too enthusiastically and almost hit the girl in the face. “No way, I’m cool. I get that stuff all the time.”

“Uh-huh.” She leaned her cheek on her hand and stared at him. “You’re adorable.”

Blood rushed to Lance’s face and he wondered, idly, whether choking on a drink was some sort of alien pickup line. He’d have to try it again sometime. But—right. Compliment. He should compliment her now. “Yeah? Well you’re pretty pretty yourself.”

Nailed it.

She laughed again, which was a good sign, probably, then raised a finger to catch the bartender’s attention. “I’d offer to buy you a drink, but you look like you’re better off sticking with water for now.”

“What? No, I’m fine. I’m _totally_ fine.” In the process of waving off her concern, Lance elbowed his shot glass and it shattered on the floor with an accusatory _crash_. He winced. “Can...we start this over? I’m Lance, paladin of Voltron, hero of the universe.”

The girl raised an eyebrow but kept right on smiling. “Hero of the universe, huh? Color me impressed.” She extended a hand. “The name’s Nyma.”

* * *

Shiro’s hand slammed against the Galra soldier’s chest armor and kept going, the white hot metal carving a path to the man’s heart. As the soldier fell, Shiro yanked his arm back and spun, catching a hail of laserfire on his forearm. It cut off abruptly as Keith moved in to finish the job, his sword cleanly removing two soldiers’ heads.

The tunnel fell silent, Shiro’s breath echoing in his ears. A dozen soldiers lay on the ground around him, one or two still breathing weakly as they bled out. A dozen more sentries lay in pieces further down, where they’d first sprung the ambush.

Keith deactivated his sword and wiped his brow, staring at the carnage with an unreadable expression. Shiro placed a hand on his shoulder—his human hand, which wasn’t covered in dried blood. He didn’t know if the gesture was for Keith’s comfort or his own, and he didn’t let himself dwell on it.

It had been a week since meeting with the Yaltian elders, and Shiro had lost track of how many Galra he and Keith had killed.

They’d started with simple traps. Hidden pits, concealed riflemen, jury-rigged explosives. Then they realized the minerals in these hills interfered with Galra communicators. Galra squads couldn’t call for reinforcements, and as long as Keith and Shiro destroyed the cameras before the bodies were recovered— _if_ they were recovered, after the Yaltians were done hiding them—Luba would never know it was her own soldiers and not the Yaltians who kept picking off her troops.

At least, it wasn’t _solely_ Yaltians picking off her troops. Deyra and the others set up their own ambushes and killed a fair number of Galra, but they weren’t as practiced at violence as the Galra prince and Zarkon’s Champion.

Shiro wished he wasn’t so good at this. He wished he could turn off the part of him that felt proud of turning the tables, of turning the predators into the prey. The thrill only lasted until his adrenaline faded, and then he was left with blood on his hands and a nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach as he surveyed his work.

A whistle sounded from the depths of the tunnel and Keith, after glancing at Shiro, answered with a signal of his own.

A moment later Deyra appeared. The Prime Elder—the one with clouded eyes, whose name, Shiro had learned, was Phana—appeared behind them, visibly shaken by the carnage: bodies everywhere, the air thick with the scent of blood and viscera.

“We lost six of ours today,” Phana said, leaning heavily on a cane. Shiro would not have thought it possible for the elders to age in the last week, but Phana was more bent than ever, their face drawn with thicker creases. “It is better than what might have been, but even so… We cannot hold out forever. We are fewer than a thousand here in the tunnels, and not all those are able to fight.”

“I know,” Shiro said, weariness settling into his bones. Maybe he had aged, too, this week. He certainly felt it. His steps seemed to drag in the long, heavy periods between battles, and he woke each morning more tired than the day before. “And I’m sorry. We’ll try to come up with something.”

Phana tapped their cane on the ground. “That was not an accusation, young one.”

Shiro blinked, then smiled and inclined his head. “Ah. Of course.”

“We received word from our kin this morning. Deyra?”

The warrior stepped forward, pressing their two left hands to their chest. “Yes, elder. The news is, as usual, a blend of fortunate and distressing.”

Shiro listened with half an ear, weary of hearing more updates on the war that had, somehow, become _his_ war. A city to the south had fallen, the tunnels beneath the streets collapsed in a Galra raid. Only a few dozen Yaltians had survived to pass along the news. There had been no news from the western plains for three days now, and Deyra believed that spoke of ill fortune for the farmers who had sought refuge in the forest.

The thing was, the Yaltians weren’t nearly as primitive as Orgul had led Shiro to believe. No, they didn’t have an army, or any organized government larger than a local council of elders. Their weapons were smaller and less powerful than Galra canons, and their warriors were unused to combat.

But they were clever and inventive, turning the tunnels into a death-trap for the Galra troops, and their telepathic communication network spanned the globe. Orgul hadn’t managed any easy victories since the first day; she’d had to chip away at hidden pockets of resistance, and meanwhile the survivors were banding together in the countryside.

It was a slow fight, but they were holding out.

“The attacks last night collapsed several of the upper tunnels,” Deyra said, once they’d finished reporting on the other Yaltian resistance movements. “We moved our people deeper, but we’re fairly confident that air strikes cannot do any real damage.”

“Well that’s something,” Keith muttered. “We took care of three strike teams today, and it’s almost time to pull back. We just have to finish staging our _actual_ mission.”

“Already done,” Deyra said, waving at several other Yaltians. They approached with bowls of dirty water and cloths. Shiro took them gratefully and cleaned the Galra blood from his hand and his armor as Deyra continued. “We collapsed the tunnel where you were to be fighting and planted some of the irreparably damaged weapons.”

As Shiro dried his hands, another Yaltian approached with a bloody cloth taken from the medical cavern. Shiro grimaced, but accepted the cloth and smeared some of the fresh, orangish blood on his hands, face, and armor as Keith did the same. It felt irreverent, painting himself in his allies’ blood, but he would do what he had to. Luba had showed no overt signs of suspicion, and Shiro wanted to keep it that way. This plan only worked as long as Keith and Shiro were able to tell the Yaltians where Luba’s troops would be concentrated each day.

Still, knowledge of the dead Yaltians weighed on him as he and Keith hurried through the concealed tunnels to the one where they’d been deployed, then trudged out into the fading sunlight. Only a small fraction of the army had died today, most of them wandering the tunnels aimlessly for a few hours before reporting back to the camps. It would take weeks more before the Galra command began to worry about their losses.

Weeks during which Orgul was not invading Earth, Shiro reminded himself. Keith had probed deeper into the battles here on the edge of the Emire. Zarkon currently had only four warships on the front lines in the area, and all the others would miss Earth by light-years on their current trajectories. As long as Orgul was occupied, Earth remained safe. Shiro would take small victories where he found them.

Shiro returned to the officers’ quarters, a small building that had been erected in the week since the invasion begun, where he and Keith shared a room. Keith had to report to Luba about the day’s mission, but Shiro, technically just an enlisted man, wasn’t required to attend.

Tonight, he couldn’t find it in him to care about the act or the war or finding out whether anything had changed since yesterday. He already knew: it hadn’t.

He shrugged out of his armor and kicked off his boots, then collapsed face-first on his bunk, dried blood itching on his skin, the ache of battle settling into his bones. His back was still damp with sweat, his hair stiff with dirt and grime, but he didn’t care. Even if he showered, tomorrow would only bring more of the same. It was _all_ the same out here. Death, chaos, blood. A losing battle he couldn’t abandon, and after the fighting, a return to the lie he hated living.

When had space become such a nightmare? He still remembered his days at the Garrison, the nights spent staring up at the stars and dreaming of going there one day. That version of himself seemed like a different person, one he hated almost as much as he envied.

Shiro was still awake when Keith returned, but he feigned sleep. He didn’t want Keith to see how much this was eating at him, but he didn’t have the energy right now to pretend he was okay.

He missed home.

* * *

_My legs are asleep._

Shiro couldn’t help but smile at the words lighting up his cell phone screen. It was after midnight, and he had to be up in six hours if he was going to make it to the prep room on time for the Kerberos mission’s departure. He should be sleeping now, but his mind was alight with stars and distant planets. This time tomorrow he’d be performing a gravity assist at Venus, the first of several that would propel their craft toward Kerberos. The Earth would be just a speck in the distance.

Shiro held his phone above his head and typed out his reply. _Tell the rest of you to listen to your legs._

_I blame Katie._

Stifling a laugh, Shiro glanced at the clock, then gave up on sleeping in the immediate future. He sat up against the dingy wall, the thin Garrison-issue blankets pooling in his lap. He’d leased an apartment in Carlsbad in the years since graduation, but when he’d been selected for the Kerberos mission, he’d let his lease expire, put his things in storage, and moved back to the Garrison. It was convenient for training, even if the beds were sorely lacking. A few young voices shouted in the warm night air outside his window—cadets who didn’t have a reason to feel guilty about flaunting curfew.

_You can’t blame everything on your sister._

_Watch me._

_Matt._

_Shiro._

_It’s late._

_Let the record state that Mr. Shirogane responded to my first text in under five seconds._

Shiro rolled his eyes. He could _hear_ Matt’s voice, a caricature of the lawyers on all the courtroom dramas he liked so much (in part, Shiro suspected, because his mother detested them with equal fervor.) Matt must have been pretty punch-drunk if he was breaking out his terrible impressions already.

_I forgot to turn off my ringer. I thought it might be an emergency._

_Riiiiiight._

Shiro’s smile widened. _So how exactly are your bad sleeping habits Katie’s fault?_

_She fell asleep on my knees._

Shiro did laugh then, the sound bursting out of him and filling the room. He quickly stifled himself, in case the instructors and other officers in the rooms around his were trying to sleep, then glanced back at his phone and saw that Matt had sent another message.

_I’m gonna miss her._

And there was the other thing that was keeping him up—more than the excitement, more than the nerves, more than the disbelief that he was piloting his own mission before his twenty-fifth birthday.

He was going to miss Earth. His friends in Carlsbad, the classmates he’d kept in touch with. His family. His mother and father, his grandparents in Japan, and especially his brother, a cargo pilot on a contract in Peru.

 _It’s only eight months_ , Shiro texted. Then, because that seemed like a weak comfort to someone who’d never left home for more than two weeks, he added, _Think of the stories you’ll have when you get back._

The words ‘Matt is typing...’ appeared at the bottom of his screen, then vanished, and Shiro felt a pang of empathy. Matt was even younger than him—only twenty-one, as he’d entered the Garrison early. He was a brilliant engineer, but classes and training and simulations couldn’t prepare you for the sheer weight of distance between you and everything you knew. Shiro had copiloted a flight to the International Space Station two years ago, and even that small taste of isolation had left him craving social interaction.

He stared at his screen, the bright white glow stinging his eyes in the darkness of his room. Words were hard to come by when space was involved. It would be so much easier if Matt were here now, and Shiro could wrap his arms around him, hold him until they both fell asleep.

 _I get it,_ he finally typed. _I’m going to miss my family, too, but don’t worry. We’ll be back before you know it._

* * *

Matt’s back ached as he threaded his way through the market. He blamed the work he’d done on the Balmera, helping to clear tunnels, dismantle Galra towers, and rebuild homes. There was only so much the lions could help with, and Matt had probably pulled something lifting chunks of metal that weighed more than he did.

Still, it was an annoying, all-over ache that put him in an even worse mood than he already was. Even the old wound on his leg was bothering him, his knee wobbling with each step.

He hated that the pain made him think of Shiro. It seemed like a lifetime ago that they’d sat together in _Persephone_ ’s tiny cockpit, a controlled explosion hurtling them into space. He’d been so scared then, clenching his teeth to keep from screaming as Shiro laughed in elation.

They’d been so young, so eager to explore the solar system. Scared of mechanical failures or errors in calculations—things that had been checked and re-checked a dozen times already. The threat of critical failure had seemed so huge and daunting back then; Matt almost wished he could go back and tell the younger him what horrors were waiting for him. He might have enjoyed the launch more knowing it was an amusement park ride compared to the year that followed.

Now he was alone in an alien spaceport, limping as he searched for a bar—not the Tipsy Mordyte; Lance would almost certainly be there now, getting sick on alien liquor and flirting with people who could kill him in an instant.

 _You shouldn’t have left him alone_ , Matt’s conscience reminded him.

He shut the voice out—easy to do with the tortured screams of two friends ringing in his ears. It had been bad enough fighting a caricature of Simsill, but then the second creature had appeared, wearing the face of a ghost.

Matt had not known Aurel well. She’d been captured by the Galra long before he’d arrived, and she’d been selected for the E-Dep project just a month after Matt had met her, dragged away with a muzzle on her face and a bloody gash across her back.

E-Dep.

Extended Deprivation.

It was the cruelest torment the Galra had in their arsenal, a long, slow, torturous decline. After Aurel had been taken, Simsill had explained to Matt what little the prisoners knew, and it had turned Matt’s stomach. Complete isolation in a tiny cell, separated from the main prison complex. Withered corpses returned weeks later.

As far as Matt knew, he was the only one to return from E-Dep alive.

He’d never seen Aurel’s corpse, of course. By then, he’d already been locked away in a metal coffin, paralyzed but mostly conscious as empty days crawled by, accompanied only by darkness and the icy drip of nutrient solution into his veins.

Matt ran into an alien twice his size and landed hard on the street of the spaceport, his hands shaking as he shut the door on his memories of that place. Not now. Not here. He needed to focus. He needed to--

Merchants and pilots gathered around him, their physical presence a crushing weight. Matt knew where he was—he _knew—_ but it felt like that prison, and these people felt like the Galra with their vicelike hands and their scalpels and syringes.

Lurching to his feet, Matt fled down the street, ignoring the shouts behind him. Lance had spoken of confidence, but Matt folded in on himself as he ran, leg twinging in time with his stride. He didn’t want to warn others away; he doubted he could manage that if he tried. All he wanted was to disappear until he found somewhere safe to rest.

The somewhere he found was of questionable safety, but it was warm and quiet and shut away from prying eyes, and Matt found a table in the corner where he didn’t feel crowded by the other patrons. He gripped his head in his hands and focused on breathing until the panic began to recede.

“Kid? _Kid_.”

Matt looked up, another spike of fear running through him until he realized the voice belonged to a server carrying a tray of brightly-colored drinks. They set a menu on the table in front of Matt, and he stared at it blankly.

“You gonna order, kid?”

“No. Yes.” Matt sucked in a long breath and traced the edges of the menu with his eyes. The menu proclaimed the restaurant's name in big, blocky, unreadable letters. Matt looked up at the server, his head pounding. “What do you recommend?”

The server laughed, two of their four hands coming to rest on their hips. “For you? A vacation. But if you’re set on a drink, you should try the Blue Nova. It’s the closest you’ll get to oblivion this side of a Galra invasion.”

Matt waved a hand, though he really didn’t feel like drinking. He’d tried it once, a few days after he’d turned twenty-one. It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat, but he had money to spare and he would look less suspicious if he bought something.

“You want something to eat, kid?”

Matt’s stomach churned at the thought of food, and he shook his head. “Wait,” he said, holding out a hand as the server turned to go. “I need information.”

The server stared at him, eyes suddenly intense. “What kind of information?”

Suddenly hyper-aware of the dozen or so other people in the bar, Matt glanced around and dropped his voice before he said, “The Galra have been using giant monsters in battle. I need to know where they’re coming from.”

The server’s expression darkened, but they turned away without another word. A few moments later, a hairy, three-horned alien dropped into the seat across from Matt. The alien was massive, so large Matt felt like a child beside them, but somehow they managed to look less threatening than anyone else in the room. It could have been the pink fur, or the round cheeks, or maybe the lopsided smile that reminded Matt of Pidge. Matt could only assume they were here to give him information.

“Rough day?” the alien asked.

“Rough year more like.”

The alien grunted, flashing a smile at the server as they returned with Matt’s Blue Nova. “Thanks, Rauli,” they said to the server’s retreating back. Matt took his drink and stared into the glass. It was cobalt blue in the truest sense—a vivid blue that literally glowed. It probably wasn’t radiation, but Matt wasn’t so eager for a buzz that he was going to risk it.

He dropped his head onto the table, groaning. “What am I even doing here?” he muttered into the wood.

A moment of silence passed, and then the alien leaned back in their chair. “Name’s Gulrogian. Call me Rogi.”

“...Matt.”

Rogi waited for Matt to look up, then smiled, crossed their arms across their generous stomach, and raised one bushy eyebrow. “I hear you want to know about the Galra.”

Matt glanced around nervously.

“Oh, fah.” Rogi waved one hand. “Don’t worry about the other folks here. No one’s gonna bother me in my own bar. Go on and ask your questions.”

It was what he’d come for, Matt thought, so he might as well see it through. Speaking quickly, he described the monsters the paladins had fought, watching Rogi for a reaction. The alien remained impassive until Matt’s words ran out and he spread his hands helplessly. “Well? Do you know anything about these things?”

Rogi blew out a long, slow breath, smile fading as they scratched their neck. “This is the first I’ve heard of something like that.”

Matt frowned. “Really? There must have been other attacks. Are you sure you haven’t… I don’t know….”

“We get all sorts out this way,” Rogi said. “Anything gets said on this rock, I hear about it. Now, the universe is a big place, so I can’t tell you no one anywhere’s been sacked by Galra monsters, but you’re the first to bring news this way.”

Matt’s heart sank. He needed answers more than he needed air to breathe. People were suffering. His _friends_ were suffering, and he couldn’t help thinking it was all meant to get to him. If he couldn’t find out where these monsters were coming from, Zarkon would keep sending them, burning through anyone and everyone Matt had ever known.

How long until his father became a monster like the others? How long until _Shiro_ became one?

Clenching his fists, Matt tried another tactic. “What happens to the prisoners of the Galra?”

Rogi blinked. “Pardon?”

“Their prisoners,” Matt said. “What happens to them? Have any of them ever come back...changed?”

“They don’t come back _period_ ,” Rogi said. Their face softened almost immediately, and they reached on hand across the table, stopping short of touching Matt’s arm. “I don’t know who they took from you, but you’d best hope they’re already dead.”

Angry words sprang to Matt’s lips, but Rogi kept talking over the top of him, their voice firm and somber.

“The ones who die? They’re the lucky ones. The rest are tortured until they’ve told Zarkon everything they know. They’re used as examples to crush rebellions before they can start. Some even change sides, start fighting for Zarkon just to escape the pain.”

“They— _what_?” Matt had to remind himself to breathe as he stared at Rogi, mouth agape. He glanced at his drink, seriously contemplating giving the glowing beverage a try. His mind kept feeding him images from his time in the Galra prison. Cold, hungry, lonely nights. Bright, hot spots of pain. Tears shed in silence, kept secret from his captors. He wouldn’t let them see his weakness.

_He defected._

Matt closed his eyes against the memories of the prisoners they’d freed from Sendak’s ship. How much did prisoners really know about what went on in their captors’ ranks?

“No one would fight for them,” he said firmly. “Not after the things they’ve done.”

Rogi’s eyes were full of pity. “I hate to break it to you, Matt, but it happens. Not often, but it does. Just this week I heard traders talking about that human, the one they call Champion.”

Matt’s blood froze in his veins. “Shiro?” he whispered, feeling a strange twisting in his gut at the name.

Rogi snapped their fingers. “That’s it. Shiro. Zarkon’s Champion.” They paused, then laughed humorlessly. “Well, I guess that title’s not so ironic now.”

_Shiro’s fingers dug into Matt’s shoulder, his full weight pressing down on Matt and pinning him to the ground. There was an instant—fleeting, but undeniable—of terror. The echoes of Shiro’s shouts filled the vestibule, and Matt felt himself begin to tremble as Shiro leaned down toward him, his face a mask of fury._

_The rage was gone as quickly as it had come, Shiro’s eyes softening to the sad, kind comfort Matt had grown used to over the course of the last month._

“ _Take care of your father.”_

Matt’s chair slammed against the wall behind him as he stood, shaking—not with fear this time, but with rage. Rogi looked at him with concern, a moment’s hesitation in his pitying eyes.

“You’re lying,” Matt said. Rogi started to argue, but Matt didn’t give him the chance. “You’re _lying_! Shiro would _never_ fight for Zarkon.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, kid, but--”

“Stop. Just…” Matt pressed a hand to his chest, trying to control the tremors wracking his body. “Just stop.” He turned and stormed toward the door, slapping the side of his helmet to open a direct channel to Lance. “Lance. Meet me back at the Lions. We’re leaving.”

He slammed the door behind him.

* * *

“Nyma. Hey. _Nyma_.”

Lance took a moment to appreciate the superbly exasperated scowl Nyma made in the instant before she turned toward the voice. They’d been talking for a while now, and Nyma was laughing, and Lance felt so good he’d completely forgotten this was a bar and he was unsupervised and there was no one to stop him from getting wasted. Why drink when there was a pretty girl with eyes just for you?

So of _course_ some grunge-punk stoner with a helmet straight out of a WWII museum had to go and interrupt their date. Lance glared at him as Nyma leaned backward in her chair and looked at him upside down.

“What do you want, Rolo? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

The purple-skinned wet blanket crossed his freakishly long arms. “I can see you’ve found yourself another plaything. But we’ve got a payload to deliver, so say goodbye and let’s get out of here.”

Lance stood up, wavering only a little (that one shot might have been a little stronger than he’d thought), and fixed Rolo with what he hoped was a take-no-prisoners challenge. “Hey. Buddy. Why don’t you pull that sick out of your ass and take a breather?”

Rolo snorted. “Do yourself a favor and stay out of this, kid.”

“Kid?!” Lance’s hand dropped to his side, and he was halfway through summoning his bayard before Nyma put a hand on his arm.

“Lance, just ignore him.” She turned to Rolo, scowling. “Go on ahead to the ship, Rolo. I’ll be there in a tick.”

After a long, tense moment, Rolo shrugged and headed for the door, raising his hand in farewell. Lance watched him go, then turned back to Nyma, deflating.

He forced a smile. “I guess this means you have to go.”

“Yep.” Nyma stood, waving a thin disc over the table. A light in the corner flashed green, and a mechanical voice thanked them for visiting the Tipsy Mordyete. Nyma flashed a grin, then towed Lance toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Lance frowned, even as he stumbled after her. It wasn’t like he was going to say _no_ to a pretty girl—especially not one as smart and as charming as Nyma. Though… he _was_ a bit confused. “Uh… we?”

Nyma laughed, paused at the door, and glanced both ways before dragging Lance away from the crowd. “Rolo doesn’t own me,” she said. “You got a ship, oh mighty paladin?”

A wicked grin crept across Lance’s face. “Oh, I’ve got something _way_ better than just a ship.”

“Oh?” Nyma shot him a curious glance, lips quirked into an invitation. “Think your team will notice if you show me around this space rock?”

Lance didn’t bother answering. Pidge and Hunk wouldn’t look up from their sciency projects for anything short of a Galra attack, Allura and Coran were probably still trying to bully each other into taking a nap, and Matt…

Well, Matt had basically given Lance permission to do whatever he wanted.

They’d left the lions outside the city, far from the private hangers and public airfield, so it was easy enough to slip away unnoticed. Nyma _ooh_ -ed and _ahh_ -ed at all the right moments as Lance showed her the Blue Lion. Lance felt a moment of curiosity in the corner of his mind where their bond lay, Blue silently questioning the stranger holding hands with Lance.

It didn’t take much reassurance to get Blue to drop her shields, and she lowered into a crouch, mouth opening to allow her pilot and his guest inside. Lance gestured for Nyma to take a seat at the controls, and she pulled him down on top of her, laughing as he flushed redder than the silent lion next to them.

“Wow,” Nyma breathed, her hands hovering over the controls. “I’ve never seen an array like this.” She looked down at him, her violet eyes wide and irresistible. “Show me how it works?”

As if Lance could say no to _that_.

They took off, Nyma laughing gleefully as the spaceport disappeared behind them. Lance circled the small moon, carefully avoiding the castle-ship’s high orbit—just in case someone was watching. When Nyma leaned forward and pointed at the planet ahead, Lance gunned the engines. They skimmed low over shimmering fields of flowers that glowed in the moonlight, chased a river spotted with bio-luminescent fish, and set down on a hill at the edge of a forest.

The trees were _huge_ , standing on exposed roots like stilts so tall Lance could have stood beneath the trunk.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Nyma asked, her arms brushing against Lance's as she stood beside him, looking up at the moon. The spaceport, from here, was nothing more than a dark smudge near the circle’s edge. Lance was more interested in Nyma and the way the stars shone in her eyes.

“Not as beautiful as you,” he said, mentally congratulating himself on his suaveness as Nyma giggled into her hand.

“ _Lance!”_ Matt’s voice, clipped and angry, burst through Lance’s comms, ruining the moment. “Meet me back at the Lions. We’re leaving.”

Lance flinched. Had Matt found out about his date already? How? And why the hell was he so pissed about it?

“Something the matter?” Nyma asked.

Lance laughed a little too loudly, tossing his helmet aside. “What? No. Pssh. No way. We’re good, babe. We’re _so_ good.”

Nyma laughed again, and pushed Lance back against the root of a tree, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. “Was that your captain?” she asked. “He ordering you back to base?”

“Who, _Matt_?” Lance waved his hands. “As if. I don’t have to listen to _him_.”

Nyma’s grin widened. “Good.”

At a soft click, Lance looked down. A pair of seamless metal bracelets encircled his wrists, a small blue light flashing on each of them. Lance frowned. “Nyma? What’s--?”

She spun him around and slammed him against the tree. The lights on the bracelets flashed, and a thin cord of blue energy encircled the root.

Lance tugged at his bonds, then swiveled his head toward Nyma, a sinking feeling in his gut. “Nyma?”

“Sorry, Lance,” she said, backing toward the Blue Lion. “You really are cute, you know. You’re just… not my type. Your Lion, on the other hand...” She lifted on shoulder in a shrug and turned, walking toward Blue, who roared inside Lance’s head, her rage striking him dumb.

Nyma must have sensed something, for she stopped, gaping up at the lion as Blue raised her shields. Nyma’s dumbfounded expression quickly morphed into one of rage, and she pounded her fists on the shields.

“Hey! Let me in, you stupid cat!”

Lance let out a laugh. “Joke’s on you, Nyma. It takes a special bond to pilot a Voltron Lion, and _you_ don’t have it.”

The look she pinned him with could have eviscerated a robeast, and Lance swallowed the rest of his boasting. A gust of wind overhead tossed her headtails like ribbons, and she grinned savagely as a cable dropped down beside her. A cargo ship hovered overhead, bay doors opening as a beam began to lift the Blue Lion off the ground.

Nyma grabbed hold of the cable and raised a hand-held communicator to her mouth. “Nice timing as usual, Rolo. Pull me up.”

“Nyma?” Lance called, tugging again, ineffectually, at his restraints. “You’re not gonna leave me here like this… are you? Nyma?”

Nyma gave him an apologetic smile. “This is the Galra Empire, Lance. Every thief for herself.”

And just like that, she was gone.

* * *

“Lance?” Matt asked as he cleared the edge of the city. “ _Lance_ , can you hear me?” It had been ten minutes since he’d left Gulrogian’s, and still no word from Lance. At first, Matt had been too angry to worry, but now… “ _Lance!_ If you’re ignoring me to flirt with some alien, Lance, I swear to god I’ll—”

He fell silent as he came to where they’d left the lions. Red stood exactly where Matt had left her, shields up, eyes dark.

The Blue Lion, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Chest tightening, Matt switched over to an open channel and hailed the other paladins. “Hey, guys? Lance didn’t happen to return to the castle already, did he?”

“Matt?” Allura yawned. “What’s going on?”

“Lance,” Matt repeated, turning a full circle, as if he’d find the giant space cat crouching behind a chair waiting to pounce. “He’s not answering me, and the Blue Lion is gone.”

A beat of silence filled the channel. “What do you _mean_ , gone?” Allura demanded, her voice no longer thick with fatigue. “Wasn’t he with you?”

Matt cringed. “We, uh, split up to look for information. Is Lance there or not?”

“Negative,” Pidge said, already falling into the voice they used on missions, terse and focused. “No one’s entered or left the castle since you guys headed down to the surface.”

Swearing under his breath, Matt headed for his lion. “Then I think we’ve got a problem.”

“Just a second, Matt,” Hunk said. “Pidge installed cameras and tracking devices in the suits before you guys left. They, uh, they started with Lance.”

“Not to say anything about Lance in particular,” Pidge said quickly. “His suit just _happened_ to be the first one I saw.”

“I’m sure,” Allura said. “How much range do you have on those sensors?”

Pidge hesitated. “Not a _lot_. It’s mostly for if we get separated on a Galra ship or something.”

Matt dropped into his pilot’s seat, rubbing his aching leg, and felt an answering rumble as Red powered on. “You think Lance has left the system?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Allura said. “I’m going to use the castle’s systems to scan for the Blue Lion, just in case.”

A screen to the left of Matt’s controls flickered to life, showing a model of the spaceport, the moon, and the planet it orbited. A small blue marker blinked on the planet’s surface.

“Got him,” Pidge said. “Matt?”

“On my way,” Matt said, and Red lunged into the sky.

“Hold on a moment.” Allura’s voice was thick with confusion, and Matt hesitated, letting Red drift as they cleared the moon’s artificial atmosphere. “Pidge, are you certain your scanners are accurate?”

“Of course I am!”

Pidge’s voice bristled with indignation, and Matt stepped in before they snapped at Allura. “Why? Is something wrong?”

A second blue icon appeared on Matt’s screen, high above the planet’s surface and moving away quickly.

“The castle has located the Blue Lion,” Allura said, “but it’s in a completely different location from what Pidge’s scanners show. It’s almost as if...”

“Someone stole the Blue Lion and left Lance on that planet,” Matt finished. “Quiznak.” He wheeled his lion around and shot off in pursuit of Blue’s signal. “Hunk, go find Lance and make sure he’s all right. Pidge, you’re with me.”

“I’m coming, too,” Allura said, then paused. “I’m _fine_ , Coran… I most certainly am _not_ about to collapse!”

Matt muted Allura’s channel as she continued arguing with Coran. If she came, she came. If not… well, Matt wasn’t going to complain if he had to smash up a few extra Galra ships. Honestly, he was glad Zarkon had been kind enough to give him a chance to vent his frustrations.

Pidge joined him in the Green Lion as they neared Blue’s beacon. Matt looked up from the nav systems and scanned his viewscreen, searching for a Galra warship among the stars. But it wasn’t a Galra ship he found.

“Are you kidding?” Pidge deadpanned. “Lance got his lion stolen by _that_? It looks like a flying junk heap.”

Matt’s lips tightened. Maybe it was bad that he was so upset about missing out on a potentially lethal battle, but right now he just didn’t care. He hands tightened around the controls, and he fired off a warning shot that wasn’t really a warning shot. The cargo ship’s main engine erupted in a fireball that was quickly smothered by the vacuum of space, and the ship slowed to a stop.

In the corner of the viewscreen, Pidge raised an eyebrow in silent judgment.

Matt ignored them and hailed the ship. He scanned the markings on the hull, anger clouding his vision as Pidge’s software supplied a translation of the indecipherable glyphs. “Attention, _Harbinger_. I don’t know if you’re aware, but you have Voltron property on board your vessel.” A grimacing purple alien appeared on his screen, glancing toward a pair of shadows at the rear of the cockpit. Matt didn’t give the crew a chance to respond. “Look, you can give us back the lion, or we can shoot you out of the sky. Which is it going to be? I should probably warn you, I’ve had a _really_ terrible day, and a nice, big explosion might just cheer me up.”

Unsurprisingly (though perhaps a bit disappointingly), the _Harbinger_ chose surrender.

* * *

Pidge watched their brother warily as the smugglers—Rolo, Nyma, and a robot named Beezer—disembarked. Their ship was largely intact despite a rough landing outside the spaceport, but it would take time and a lot of money to get it operational again. The Yellow Lion landed next to Red and Green, and Lance sprinted out, pausing only long enough to give Nyma a dirty look as he boarded the _Harbinger_ to reclaim Blue.

Pidge couldn’t bring themself to care about any of that, or about the curious crowd gathering at the edge of town to watch the confrontation. None of that was as troubling as Matt’s simmering anger. He’d smoothed it over well enough that everyone else passed it off as frustration at Lance letting an alien conwoman seduce him, tie him up, and steal his lion.

Pidge knew better.

As the Blue Lion joined her fellows, Pidge tapped Matt on the shoulder. He jumped, glanced down at Pidge, then quickly turned away.

Crossing their arms, Pidge asked, “So are you gonna tell us what happened?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Pidge’s eyebrows shot up toward their hairline. “ _Really._ ‘I’ve had a shitty day, so surrender now or I’ll blow you to pieces.’ Sound familiar?”

Matt’s mouth tightened. “I didn’t say shitty.”

Pidge groaned aloud, but their interrogation was cut short as Lance burst out of his lion and stormed over to Nyma, jabbing a finger at her nose.

“What the _hell_ , Nyma?!”

A faint blush darkened her pale cheeks and she turned away from Lance, crossing her arms. “Look, kid, I already told you. It’s every woman for herself out here.”

“Bullshit,” Lance growled. “You’re working for Zarkon, aren’t you?”

Rolo towered over Lance, dark eyes burning with contempt. Matt sighed and started forward, muttering, “We’ll better get in there before Lance gets himself shot.”

“We’re _not_ working for Zarkon,” Rolo growled.

Hunk grabbed Lance’s arm before he could physically launch himself at Rolo. “Oh yeah?” Lance demanded. “Then what were you gonna do with the Blue Lion, sell it to some who _doesn’t_ want to use it to take over the universe? Or maybe you were hoping to pilot it yourself? Is that it? You want to be a hero, _Lie-_ ma?”

Nyma flinched, but stiffened her spine and bore down on Lance until he retreated a single step. “Oh-ho-ho, believe me, _runt_ , I’m not an idealistic idiot like you. I’ve _tried_ defying Galra authority, Lance. It didn’t go well. You try to fight Zarkon, you die. All I wanted was enough money to retire somewhere far, _far_ away from the war. Besides.” She tossed her headtails over her shoulder. “You’re the idiot who was bragging about your lion in a bar. If we hadn’t stolen it, someone else would have.”

Lance flushed, and Matt put a hand on his chest. “That’s enough, Lance.”

“But--”

“We got your lion back, and these two are gonna have a long wait before they get back in the sky.”

Lance turned surly, pulling away from Matt and wrinkling his nose at Nyma. “They’re only gonna keep stealing if we let them go.”

“I know.” Matt turned and stalked toward the Red Lion, favoring his left leg ever so slightly. “Thankfully, that’s not our problem.”

* * *

“ _Idiots!_ ”

Orgul’s voice rang through the comm deck, terrifying even at a distance. When she’d summoned the senior officers from each front of the invasion, Keith figured it was going to be ugly, but even he was taken aback by the vicious twist to Commander Orgul’s face.

“Did someone replace my army with _infants_ when my back was turned? The Yaltians are _savages_! So why is it not one of you has managed to stamp out the seeds of rebellion in your sectors?”

A deathly silence filled the room. Keith couldn’t see the officers gathered on other comm decks on other parts of the planet, but he imagined each scene was a reflection of this one: frozen officers grimacing in fear, hands on their weapons despite their accuser being far above the planet’s surface. The whole room stank of terror.

No one had a justification for the fact that the invasion had stalled. No one knew why the locals continued to evade them, or how they seemed to anticipate so many of the Galra army’s tactics.

Keith suppressed the urge to smile. The Yaltians were surviving, yes. Frustrating Orgul? _Absolutely_. But they weren’t winning. It was far too early to celebrate.

Still, it was fun to see the commander work herself up into a rabid fury.

“Let me make this _perfectly_ clear,” Orgul said, her voice dropping low. The officers listened, rapt with fear, hardly daring to breathe. “You have three days to turn this invasion around, or you’re all getting reassigned to the ganu mines of the Lestrian Quadrant! Am I understood?”

A ripple of agreement spread through the room, and Orgul cut the connection.

As the officers began to disperse, Luba stalked toward Keith and Shiro, her fear transmuting into anger that made the other Galra give her a wide berth. “This is all _your_ fault.”

Keith’s nerves screamed with tension and he crossed his arms, claws digging into his arms to keep himself from showing anything but disdain. “I fail to see how. You’re in charge of this sector, Luba.”

“And _you’re_ supposed to be clearing out the resistance.”

“We are,” Keith snarled. “I can’t help it if the natives are scattered across those hills. You want us to wipe them out, _you_ find a way to corral them all together.”

He spun before she could say anything more, hoping she took his anger for fear of Orgul’s displeasure and not fear of discovery—or worse, giving the Galra command ideas that would make his and Shiro’s lives harder.

Outside the communication deck, he exchanged a glance with Shiro. Three days, Orgul had said. Just three days. The Yaltians could hold out for that long. And then?

Keith tried not to worry about it.

* * *

The atmosphere on the castle-ship’s bridge was a frigid one. They’d finished installing the new Q-conduit and other parts thirty minutes ago, and Hunk and Allura were verifying the last of the scans to make sure no one had missed anything. Lance and Coran stood at the railing looking down on the spaceport, Coran trying to cheer Lance up with, supposedly, romantic advice.

“Now, if you want to woo a Velleuran, you’re in luck. Just start talking about all the chores you’ve done in the castle.” Coran began counting them off on his fingers. “Washing dishes, scrubbing cryo-pods, waxing floors, making beds, cleaning evacuators--”

“You want me to flirt with a girl by telling her how great I am at scrubbing _toilets_?” Lance shrieked, staring at Coran in open horror.

Coran, oblivious as usual, flashed him a thumbs-up. “Exactly! Velleurans are huge fans of sanitation.”

Lance looked like he’d just eaten some bad food goo and hid his face in the hood of his jacket. “Please stop talking.”

Pidge smiled at them, but it faded as they caught sight of Matt, who had remained by the doors, leaning against the wall and staring at the ceiling, since they’d returned from the spaceport. He hadn’t even changed out of his armor yet, though everyone else had.

“Matt?”

Matt tensed, but smiled at Pidge, a distracted look in his eyes. “Hey, Pidge.”

“Are you ready to talk about what happened down there?”

“No. Sorry, Pidge.” Matt brushed past them, crossing to Allura’s side as she closed the last report and high-fived Hunk—awkwardly, but enthusiastically. “I take it the ship’s clean?”

“Cleaner than a Bedraxian’s plate after fellyak!” Allura said, beaming. She blinked at the confused frowns that answered her proclamation, then cleared her throat. “That is to say, yes. We’re back to peak condition.”

Matt nodded. “Great. Any plans for our next target?”

Allura turned to the display screen and tapped a few keys. The stellar map expanded to fill the bridge, stars and planets glowing a soft blue. With another simple command, red lights began to wink on. Hundreds of them— _thousands_ , nearly filling the visible map.

“These are the distress beacons the castle has picked up in the last ten thousand years,” Allura explained. “I’d like to devise an algorithm to sort them for use based on age, urgency, and Galra presence in the vicinity, but until then we’ll just head to the nearest beacon and see what we can do to help.”

“Hang on.”

Allura turned toward Matt, still smiling. Pidge was watching him, too, though with considerably less cheer.

Matt looked at the red dots overhead, a frown creasing his brow. “Have you ever heard of a planet called Vel-17? Or… maybe that’s the system, I’m not exactly sure.”

“I’m not familiar with it, no. Coran?”

“Sorry, Princess. I haven’t heard of it either.”

Allura turned back to the monitor, dismissing the map of distress beacons and running a search. “Vel-17, you said?” She paused, scanning the results. “Here we go.” The stellar map rotated, stopping with an unremarkable planet at the center, highlighted in blue.

Pidge scanned the specs listed beneath the planet’s name. “Does that say _dead planet_?” they asked, stomach turning. “What does that mean?”

“A dead planet is one without a measurable Quintessential reading,” Coran explained. “Planets like that are incapable of supporting life—aside from self-sustaining habitats with a crystal generator, of course.”

Matt stepped forward until he stood directly under the projection of Vel-17, frowning deeply. “That’s where we’re going next.”

“What?” Lance asked. “I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong. You want to go to the zombie planet? _Why_?”

“Yeah, no, I’m with Lance on this one,” Hunk said. “Sorry, Matt, but this place sounds like exactly the sort of place we should stay away from.”

Coran raised a timid finger from the side of the room. “I hate to quibble, but it’s not a ‘zombie’ planet. It’s a _dead_ planet. Technically speaking.”

Lance threw his hands in the air. “Even _more_ reason to stay away!”

Matt glared at him, hands clenching and unclenching at his side. He didn’t seem to realize that he’d summoned his bayard, though thankfully he hadn’t yet activated it. “I’m going there, with or without the rest of you.”

“Why?” Pidge asked, drawing Matt’s attention to them.

He hesitated. “That’s where the robeasts are coming from.”

“The _what_?” Hunk held his hands in front of him, shaking his head. “Nope. No, no, no, no. Uh-uh. No way I’m going to the planet of the giant space monsters. We barely beat the _last_ one, now you wanna go find more?”

“I want to go stop Zarkon from _making_ more.”

The others fell silent, and Allura stepped forward, hands clasped before her, a look of concern on her face. “How can you be certain that’s where these creatures are coming from?”

Matt stared at her for a long moment, his lips parted, his eyes distant. Then he shook himself and refocused on Vel-17, a loathing Pidge didn’t recognize creeping across his features.

“I know,” he said, “because that’s where I was held prisoner for the last year.”


	13. Vel-17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Keith and Shiro joined the fight for freedom on the planet Yaltin, and Commander Orgul issued an ultimatum: subdue resistance in three days or face her wrath. Meanwhile, Team Voltron left the Balmera and stopped at a spaceport for spare parts. There, Matt heard rumors that Shiro had joined Zarkon's army, and Lance almost had his lion stolen by Nyma. They left headed for Vel-17, where Matt spent nearly a year inside a Galra prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter: the first scene is a dream featuring moderately graphic descriptions of violence and death. You can skip to the first scene break if you need to.
> 
> Possible body horror in the description of a Galra creation. Stop reading at, "A behemoth lumbered out," and skip to the next paragraph.

Matt stood frozen as the door in front of him opened. Beyond lay darkness. Complete. Haunting. He knew with the kind of visceral certainty that overrode rational thought that if he stepped through those doors he would not return.

A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness, one hand extended toward Matt in invitation. _Live, die; what does it matter?_ the shadow seemed to say. _Let go. Stop fighting your fate._

A hand closed around Matt’s shoulder, and for an instant the darkness seemed to recede. He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t dead yet. Whatever the Galra had in store for him, he could face it. He could _fight_ it. They didn’t own him.

The hand pulled Matt back, out of reach of the grasping shadow hand, and a young man—tall, dark-haired, with a kind voice and an edge to his glare that promised retribution—placed himself between Matt and the darkness.

_Shiro!_

The cry held itself behind Matt’s teeth, tears building behind his eyes. (It hurt. _Why_ did it hurt so much?)

Shiro didn’t look at Matt as he stepped forward, grappling with the shadowy figure and claiming a familiar blade, long and hooked, stained vibrant red as though with fresh blood. Only then did he turn around, lips pulled back in a snarl, eyes glowing with golden light. He raised his sword over Matt’s head.

Fear ignited within Matt, a vacuum consuming hope. He took a step back.

The scene shifted.

Matt stood alone on a battlefield, broken bodies littering the ground around him. Arusians. Balmerans. Rogi’s headless body lay propped against a chain-link fence, head on the ground several feet away. It stared at Matt in silent accusation.

The Red Lion lay in a crumpled heap behind him, motionless and cold. Matt could feel her agony inside him, distant but oppressive, like storm clouds heavy on the horizon. He stood between her and the advancing Galra soldier, one last line of defense. Matt’s armor was cracked and bloody, his bayard lost somewhere; he was helpless to stop the enemy’s advance but he couldn’t stand aside. He knew if he did, he would lose more than just his lion.

The Galra’s appearance changed as he approached, a whirlwind of familiar faces. Some of them, Matt could put a name to. Others he knew from his imprisonment, or from dark dreams that stood alone in his memory, untethered to any place or time.

It was Zarkon, and he forced Allura to her knees before he severed her head with a glowing purple blade.

It was Sendak, grinning as he stepped over Coran’s charred corpse.

The changes came faster as the Galra approached Matt. Haxus fought Hunk without turning his eyes away from Matt, and as Hunk fell Haxus tore his heart from his chest. The witch in the hooded cloak seized Lance in a vice of violet electricity and laughed as he screamed. Faceless scientists, their Galra armor painted with white symbols, forced Pidge into a metal coffin in the earth. In the instant before the chamber sealed, Matt locked eyes with Pidge, who screamed his name, a sound that gutted him and rang in his ears long after the pneumatic locks engaged.

A hundred faces flashed into being and yielded to the next. Guards, soldiers, surgeons, scholars, commanders. Some were clear, others hazy and indistinct, but Matt felt the same cold drip of horror with each, an intimate fear that dragged him back into his hellish existance on Vel-17.

He held a knife in his hands—plain steel, unfamiliar symbol etched into the blade, a flimsy defense against the monster bearing down on him. He clung to it anyway, if only because he’d forgotten how to run. He was a paladin of Voltron, a defender of the universe. If he was the last to stand against the Galra empire, he would stand. If he was destined to die, he would go down fighting.

The changing Galra faces suddenly stopped, and Matt’s resolve faltered.

“Shiro?”

Though he wore the armor of a Galra soldier, it was Shiro who stood before Matt now. Shiro’s kind eyes, weary and longing. Shiro’s easy smile, eroded by a year of captivity.

“Matt.” Shiro’s voice, trembling with hope.

“You’re alive,” Matt said. It felt like a question.

Shiro reached out toward Matt. “I missed you.”

Suddenly Matt’s feet remembered how to move. He lurched forward, first walking, then running toward Shiro, whose arms opened to receive him. Matt threw himself at Shiro, heart lurching as his arms found flesh—solid, warm, _real—_ and his fingers curled around the thin fabric of a prison uniform.

The lurch in his center became a flame, the flame white-hot pain. Matt’s fingers twisted deeper into Shiro’s shirt as he realized he couldn’t breathe.

“Shh.” Shiro’s voice tickled Matt’s ear. “Don’t fight it.”

Confusion gathered like a storm front behind Matt’s eyes, but he was pulling back, separating from himself. Shiro raised a hand to cup Matt’s cheek, only the fingers were hot and slick with blood.

Matt’s blood.

Matt stood behind himself, and he saw his bayard in Shiro’s hands, the blade running through Matt’s chest and protruding from his back. Blood dripped from the point, gathering on the ground beneath him. Shiro dismissed the bayard, and Matt’s body collapsed to the ground at his feet, staring up at the stars with unseeing eyes.

* * *

Matt woke unable to breathe.

Around him was oppressive dark, a claustrophobic space too small for the thin sound of his rasping cries. He thrashed against the hands holding him—no. Not hands. Sheets. Silk sheets, slick with sweat and tangled around his legs.

He shot upright, groping for the lamp on his bedside table. Cool orange light filled the room. The nightmare retreated with the darkness, but the fear and panic remained as strong as ever, guilt slowly growing to rival them for control of Matt’s heaving lungs.

He gasped in air, but he still felt like he was drowning.

“That wasn’t Shiro,” he whispered, fingers twisting at his hair until his scalp screamed with pain. “That wasn’t real. It wasn’t Shiro. It wasn’t real.”

 _The Champion fights for Zarkon_.

A sob broke free from Matt’s frozen lungs, and he curled in on himself, squeezing his head between his clenched fists as if he could force out the intrusive thoughts. Thoughts of Rogi’s warning, of Shiro stabbing him through the heart with the red bayard, of yellow eyes, _evil_ eyes staring out of that familiar face. Of Shiro attacking him that day in the Arena.

 _Saving me. He was_ saving _me._

He couldn’t stop the cold lump of doubt burrowing into his mind. Matt knew Shiro, but what if he’d changed in the Galra prisons? Matt trusted Shiro, but what if Zarkon had broken him? He was _Shiro_.

But what if he wasn’t Shiro anymore?

An alert blared through the speakers overhead, making Matt jerk and kick the wall. He swore, cradling his foot as Allura’s voice came on the PA.

“Paladins, we’ve almost arrived at Vel-17. Assemble on the bridge in five hundred ticks.”

 _Ten minutes_ , Matt’s brain supplied—what small corner of it wasn’t still stuck inside his nightmares. He scrubbed his hands across his face, taking one deep breath after another. The tremors wracking his body quieted, and he forced himself to stand. Ten minutes wasn’t enough time to banish the images from his mind, but he could fake it. He’d had a lot of practice with that lately.

* * *

Keith’s blade stuck in the ribs of a Galra soldier. He planted his foot on the man’s back and yanked his sword free, watching the body fall with practiced disinterest. The last two days had been filled with almost nonstop violence, Keith and Shiro fending off attacks on all fronts, occasionally surfacing to assure Luba of their continued loyalty. It was getting harder and harder to fake the success of their missions, but with the invasion tending toward aimless melee and bodies piling up at every turn, inquiries were brushed aside.

This tunnel, at least, was safe once more, Galra and sentries alike crumpled on the ground. The one Keith had just killed had been the last—a rear captain who’d made a break for the surface to report the treason.

It wasn’t the first time Keith had stabbed someone in the back to keep this secret.

He’d forced himself not to keep tally of how many Galra he’d killed. Doing so would only make it harder to sleep at night, and rest was already a herculean feat. He did what had to be done; faced with the choice between Galra lives and Yaltian, he chose the innocents. There would be time later to deal with the guilt churning in his gut at the carnage.

Turning, he found Shiro standing in the center of a ring of bodies. Luba had started sending more Galra with the robotic troops, hoping the soldiers’ skill and bloodlust would turn the tide of this battle. Keith knew she, like many of the commanding officers, thought the Yaltians were somehow targeting a weakness in the sentries’ programming.

“It’s almost dark,” Keith said, breathing hard. How many battles had they fought today? Or had they spent the night in these tunnels and fought through another day without realizing it? It seemed an eternity since he’d last slept. “We should start heading back.”

Shiro didn’t answer.

Frowning, Keith approached him, a question rising to his lips. It vanished when he circled around in front of Shiro and saw the look on his face. Lost, horrified, distant. His shoulders were rigid, his arm still glowing faintly at his side, the magenta light tinged black-violet from the blood on his hand. Keith hadn’t seen him like this since the day he’d left the Arena.

“Shiro?”

Keith reached out and lightly touched Shiro’s arm. Shiro jerked away, head snapping up to stare at Keith with wide-eyed terror. He staggered back, arm blazing brighter and swinging up into a guard. Keith froze, holding up his empty hands in a disarming gesture, mouth working silently as he tried to find something to say.

Before the words came to Keith, Shiro stiffened, sucking in a sharp breath. His arm deactivated, plunging the tunnel into deep shadow, and for a moment Keith couldn’t make out anything but Shiro’s hunched silhouette in the glow of distant lamps. Harsh breathing echoed off the stone.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said at length. Keith’s eyes had adjusted somewhat to the dimmer lighting, and he stepped toward Shiro, stopping when he noticed the way Shiro was shaking. “I… I don’t…”

“It’s fine,” Keith said. “Are you okay?”

A long silence followed his question, long enough for Keith’s eyes to adjust so that he could see the furrow in Shiro’s brow, the way his lips turned down.

When Shiro finally spoke, his voice was small and uncertain. “I don’t know.”

“Shiro?”

“I don’t know, Keith,” Shiro said again, more harshly. “What are we even doing here? This—this is _slaughter_. Do you have any idea how many people we’ve killed in the last week?”

Keith shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“Hundreds,” Shiro said. “Ten times more than I ever killed in the Arena. Twenty times more. _Shit_.” He doubled over wrapping his hands around his head. “ _Why did I think this was a good idea?_ ”

Motion deeper in the tunnel caught Keith’s attention and he glanced over as a small group of Yaltians, led by Deyra, rounded the corner. He waved them back, then stepped closer to Shiro, feeling awkward. “We’re saving the Yaltians, Shiro.”

“We’re _killing_ people.”

“We’re killing _Galra_.”

“ _You’re Galra_!”

Keith’s voice faltered. The anger that had begun to prickle at his patience crumbled, and he stared down at Shiro helplessly. “We didn’t start this fight, Shiro. Zarkon did. Orgul did. I thought we were trying to save this planet. I thought we were trying to save Earth.”

When Shiro didn’t answer, didn’t even move except to press a hand against the tunnel wall to support himself, Keith grit his teeth.

“This isn’t pretty, Shiro. I get it. It’s ugly and dirty and I don’t know if it’s a good thing, what we’re doing, but we both decided it was the _right_ thing. I—You—We just have to last through tomorrow,” he finished lamely. He couldn’t figure out how to put into words what he was feeling. Hurt, confused, betrayed. This whole thing had been Shiro’s idea. Why was he having second thoughts now?

Shiro turned away from Keith, drawing in a deep, shaky breath. “I know. I know. I just… What happens after that? How many more times are we going to have to do this? How many more planets? How many more people am I going to kill before this is over?”

“I don’t know.” Keith wished he had a better answer to give.

* * *

The first time Keith saw Shiro fight in the Arena was a week after Keith’s father died.

Galra culture didn’t prescribe a time frame for mourning, or any traditions beyond simple militaristic funeral rights. Lieutenant Maja had spoken insincere words of condolence to Keith when she’d delivered the news and had barely concealed her glee when she informed him that Zarkon had granted her command of the _Executioner._ It wasn’t a princedom, not yet, but the post gave her a chance to prove herself.

Keith himself had been reassigned to the _Predator_ under Commander Sendak, who had given him a week to ‘sort himself out.’ It had the air of condescension, but with his life suddenly turned on end, Keith had taken the reprieve with gratitude. He wasn’t sure if what he felt could be considered grief—he’d felt no great affection for his father and hadn’t even been aware that the man was planetside fighting rebels at the time of his death. Keith had been busy with his own training, and his father had long since given up involving him in the command of the ship, perhaps out of frustration for Keith’s apathy toward conquest.

In a way, reassignment had been a blessing. For as long as Keith could remember, his future had been laid out for him. Training on the _Reaper_ and then under his father. Battle, expansion, enforcing Zarkon’s will. Taking over his father’s command once he was old enough, assuming his place among the other princes.

Death, violence, retribution.

Murder.

He was adrift onboard the _Predator_ , but at least no one expected anything of him. He spent his week of reprieve on the training deck, beating training bots into slag and dueling anyone who would accept his challenge. Mostly that meant mid-rank soldiers and a few petty officers who took his invitation as an order. None of them put up much of a fight and not, Keith thought, because he outmatched them.

They didn’t want to upset the grieving prince.

Eight days after his father’s death, whispers swept across the _Predator_ , louder on the training deck than elsewhere. Another challenger had risen to face the Champion. The bout was scheduled for late evening, when all but a skeleton crew was off duty.

Keith went only to see what the fuss was. He’d heard about Sendak’s Arena, where prisoners were pitted against each other for the Galra’s entertainment. The _Predator_ was nearly as efficient as the _Executioner_ at ending the lives of rebels, insurgents, and enemy soldiers, but Sendak preferred to frame his executions as entertainment. Keith hadn’t seen the appeal.

Now, standing near the wall at the top of the stands, behind a sea of roaring spectators, Keith couldn’t look away.

He was fifteen years old, small for his age and shaking with terror, standing against a larger opponent with only a sword to his name. He was fifteen years old, standing in an Arena much like this one, questioning his path for the first time.

He was seventeen, watching in horror as a small, frail human made a desperate stand against a towering Thlossian. Did the other Galra see the irony? Or maybe the irony was the _point_ of it all. Maybe Sendak’s Arena was a way for his soldiers to vicariously relive the thrill of their Proof. Maybe these fights were popular not in spite of the similarity, but _because_ of it.

It only made Keith sick to his stomach.

He left before the match was over, sending the Champion one last, sympathetic look as he went. He looked to be made of sterner stuff than Keith. Maybe he enjoyed the fighting as much as the Galra cheering him on. Maybe he would have made a better prince than Keith.

Fate could be cruel in the Galra empire.

* * *

Allura turned the dagger over in her hand as she waited for the other paladins to arrive on the bridge. There was nothing special about the weapon itself, a six-inch wedge of luxite, a common enough metal for blades, from what she remembered. It was well-made, unadorned except for a Galran symbol etched into the blade. _Loyalty_.

Ten thousand years after Zarkon’s betrayal, she supposed loyalty must mean something else to his people, but the irony still left a bitter taste on her tongue.

What nagged at her most was the fact that it was here at all. Pidge said they’d found it in a corridor on the ninth floor near the wormhole generator. Hunk’s battle with Haxus hadn’t taken them to that part of the castle, and Galra sentries were only equipped with standard-issue laser rifles, which meant that the blade must have belonged to Sendak.

Something about that thought didn’t sit right with Allura, and she’d spent the better part of last night staring at the dagger when she should have been resting. She and Coran were almost back to full strength after their ordeals on Arus and the Balmera, but they’d all agreed on one more night’s rest before approaching Vel-17.

So of course Allura had wasted it all staring at a knife.

Allura shoved aside her guilt. She was the princess of Altea, the head of Voltron, and the commander of the castle-ship. Unraveling problems was her duty.

Coran appeared at her shoulder, mustache tickling her ear as he peered at the dagger in her hands. “What have you got there, Princess?”

Allura stepped away from him, rubbing her ear and trying to cover it by tucking a stray curl into her bun. “It’s that dagger Pidge found.”

“Ah. Sendak’s dagger?” Coran stroked his mustache. If he’d seen Allura’s gesture, he pretended not to notice. He _did_ notice when she failed to answer and looked at her, arching an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Allura said, maybe a little too quickly. Coran narrowed her eyes, and she wilted, turning her attention back to the dagger. “Something’s bothering me about this,” she admitted. “I can’t figure out what it is.”

Coran hummed thoughtfully, then reached out and plucked the dagger out of her hand. He squinted at it, pinching the tip of the blade between two fingers and holding it up in front of his face. “Seems perfectly normal to me. Atrocious penmanship on the etching,” he said, tipping his head to the side. “Though Galran’s always looked a little sloppy to me. Too many angles, like someone fired a laser in a hall full of broken mirrors and called it a language.”

A smile tugged at Allura’s lips, though she knew the significance of the engraving was not lost on Coran. He was just as lost as her, but he was better at hiding it. She glanced at the door as Lance and Hunk walked in, bickering about something under their breath.

Allura took the dagger back from Coran and returned it to the sheath she’d found for it, which she’d attached to the back of her armor at the waist. “I suppose we’ll have time to worry about that later,” she muttered to Coran before stepping forward to join Hunk and Lance. “Is everything all right, paladins?”

Hunk shot a guilty look at Lance, who ran a hand through his hair and glared at the floor. “We’re just…” Lance broke off with an annoyed groan.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Hunk asked in a rush. He glanced from Lance, who was now glaring at the door, to Allura and Coran, who traded shocked looks. “It’s just. We don’t really know what happened to Matt, but it was obviously bad, and, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a great idea to make him go back to where it happened?”

“No one’s making him do anything,” Lance argued.

Hunk crossed his arms. “You’re just as worried about him as me and you know it.”

Lance didn’t have anything to say to that.

“Matt asked us to go to Vel-17,” Allura pointed out. “That means he believes he can handle it. We should trust him.”

She wondered if the others could hear her own hesitation. If they could, they didn’t get a chance to call her out, for the door opened at that moment, revealing Matt and Pidge. Allura’s chest constricted painfully at the sight of Matt, dark circles under his eyes, mouth turned down into a frown.

Noticing the pointed look Hunk and Lance exchanged, she passed between them on her way to greet the Holts. She couldn’t let them see that she thought Hunk had a point; Matt didn’t look ready for a day of training, much less a mission to the prison where he’d been held for almost a year. But trust was the foundation of Voltron, and Allura had to keep sight of that.

Besides, they would face worse things than painful memories in the course of their fight. It was better for the paladins to face their fears early, rather than waiting until the stakes were higher.

“Let’s get right to it,” Allura said brightly as everyone gathered around the holographic display showing a map of Vel-17. The planet itself was still some distance off, visible on the viewscreen as a grayish smudge the size of a thumbnail. “Coran?”

Coran flipped a few switches on the controls, then stepped forward, gesturing to the sphere overhead as bare gray rock became a blue grid.

“We’ve run some preliminary scans on Vel-17, and there’s no signs of Galra activity.”

Matt frowned. “What do you mean? There’s a prison down there.”

“There is.” Coran made a rectangle with his fingers, expanding it to zoom in on a location in the planet’s southern hemisphere. A small, blocky building appeared in the middle of a featureless plain. “The only structure on the planet, and even that seems to be abandoned.”

Looking troubled, Matt shook his head. “That’s impossible. It’s been less than two weeks since I escaped.”

“It’s been less than two weeks since you _returned to Earth_ ,” Coran amended. His face softened at Matt’s obvious confusion, and he crossed the bridge to lay a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “I’ve been thinking. You said your memory of your escape is fuzzy.” Coran’s voice was gentle, but Matt still flinched. “It’s possible you were moved elsewhere prior to your escape, or perhaps there was some other delay between your escape and when you actually reached Earth.”

“Either way, this is good news,” Hunk said. “If it’s abandoned, that means we won’t have to fight any Galra, right?”

“Theoretically,” Allura said. “There is a chance that someone is down there, but there aren’t enough of them to be detected from this range.”

“When will we know for sure?” Pidge asked.

Allura glanced at the hologram, its uniform color indicating a complete lack of Quintessence. “We’ll enter high orbit in less than ten minutes. If the scans still haven’t detected anything at that point, we can assume anyone who _is_ down there poses no threat to us.”

Hunk frowned. “Why’s that?”

“Quintessential deprivation,” Coran explained. He dismissed the model of Vel-17 and brought up an old Altean medical model showing the flow of Quintessence inside an Altean body. “Vel-17 is a dead planet; it doesn’t generate its own Quintessence. Anyone living on its surface without life support would waste away within a few days.” On the medical model, the flow of Quintessence slowed to a stop, and dialogue boxes popped up indicating the progression of organ failure. “We can already tell there aren’t any large life-support crystals on the surface, which means if someone _is_ down there, it’s either a small number of individuals with portable life-support or a larger number of people with no life-support at all, in which case they’re likely too weak to attack.”

“Well, now, hang on,” Lance said. “If the Galra pulled out of this place, then how do we know there’s even anything useful down there?”

“They left the building, didn’t they?” Pidge asked. “There could be a computer down there I could pull records from.”

"Or they could have left the prisoners to die,” Matt said, his voice frigid. He turned to fix Lance with a stare that made Allura shiver even though it wasn’t directed at her. “I’m going down there.”

Lance held up his hands. “Okay, okay. Cool your jets, man. I’m all for easy missions. I just want us all to be aware of the fact that this might all be for nothing.”

Matt’s jaw clenched, but rather than respond to Lance, he turned to Allura. “What’s the plan?”

“We go in quiet,” Allura said. “If there _are_ Galra left down there, we don’t want to give them a chance to destroy whatever records remain.”

Pidge grinned suddenly. “I installed a cloaking device on Green,” they said. “It’s based off the invisible walls in the maze on the training deck.”

Allura nodded. “Excellent. Then as long as the scanners don’t turn up any new information, we’ll depart once we establish an orbit around the planet.”

* * *

The scanners didn’t turn up anything new. Matt seemed troubled by this turn of events, irritable and distracted as the five paladins gathered in the cockpit of the Green Lion, but he responded to concern with a snappish dismissal. Hunk and Lance exchanged glances behind Matt’s back, while Allura focused on exuding a sense of calm.

“Take us down, Pidge,” she said, holding an overhead handle to keep her balance as they left the castle and headed down toward Vel-17. From inside the Green Lion, Allura couldn’t say how well the cloaking device worked, but Green’s scanners and the prison complex on the ground below remained silent as they approached.

Pidge set them down near the southern wall and carved a hole into the building with their bayard. The corridor on the other side was pitch black, and one by one the paladins turned on the headlamps built into their helmets.

Once inside, Allura glanced at the armor covering her wrist. A small display embedded there showed the external map of the prison complex, downloaded from the castle-ship’s system. “This is a large building,” she said. “We should split into two groups.”

“I’m going with Matt,” Pidge said at once.

Allura had already opened her mouth to offer the same, but she hesitated with a glance at Matt’s face. Obscured though it was by his face-shield, the tension was plain in the set of his jaw and the lines around his eyes.

“Very well,” Allura said. “Lance, you join them. Look for the administrative area and see if you can find a computer. Keep an eye out for Galra stragglers,” she added with a pointed look at Matt, who hardly seemed to hear her. Lance followed her gaze and nodded. “Hunk, you and I will look for prisoners.”

For a moment, Matt looked like he was going to argue. Allura prayed he kept his mouth shut. Just being down here was obviously upsetting him; she couldn’t imagine his reaction should they find that his fellow prisoners had been killed before the base was abandoned.

Thankfully, Matt accepted Allura’s orders with a reluctant nod. “They kept the prisoners at the edges of the complex,” he said. “I know the hangar is at the center. I think that’s where they kept their crystal, too. We’ll probably find the offices near there.”

“All right,” Allura said. “Good luck.”

They parted ways, Lance leading his group down a corridor that led toward the center of the complex. Allura watched them go, her eyes lingering on Matt’s hunched shoulders until he was out of sight. Then she turned, and found Hunk doing the same.

“Better make this quick, huh?” Hunk tried to smile, but the expression fell flat.

Allura forced herself to set out in the opposite direction the other group had taken. Matt would be fine. Pidge and Lance were capable warriors, and both cared for Matt.

_Stop worrying._

True to Matt’s assessment, they found the cells lining the outer wall of the building, flanking a dark, cold corridor that reeked of blood and excrement. Hunk gagged when they entered the first cell block, and even Allura’s stomach churned at the stench. She left Hunk doubled over by the door and went to examine the cells.

They stretched out ahead of her, long, thin cavities with ceilings too low for most species to stand upright. Her headlamp swept the cell from end to end, light reflecting off metal restraints affixed to the back wall. If they were any indication, each cell had once held as many as a dozen prisoners. It would have been a tight fit, leaving the prisoners little room to sleep.

Hunk joined her by the first cell, the front wall made of clear plastic reinforced with metal bars. There would be no privacy in the cells, no way to hide from the guards who must have patrolled the building.

“It’s freezing in here,” Hunk whispered, and Allura knew he wasn’t complaining about his own comfort.

She swallowed, eyeing the old, dark stains on the walls and floor of the cell. She tried not to picture Matt in here, sitting against the wall with his wrists shackled above his head or huddled in the corner with his fellow prisoners, desperate for warmth.

She tried not to think about how much of the blood on the walls might belong to him.

At length, she turned away from the first cell and headed to the next, Hunk following silently behind her. She knew he must be thinking about Matt, too, but neither of them gave voice to their thoughts.

There were eight cells in this block, each as empty as the last. No prisoners—but no bodies, either. Allura wasn’t sure what to make of it. Trading anxious looks, they passed through the far door and continued on around the perimeter of the building, dread as cold as the Vellian chill settling into Allura’s bones.

* * *

Weeks passed, and despite his resolve to give the Arena a wide berth, Keith found himself drawn back there week after week. First it was rumors that the Champion refused to kill initiates who were obviously unsuited to the Arena. Weakness, they called it, but Keith had seen the man fight. He wasn’t weak. He was ruthless, skillful, and cunning. He was, as a Champion should be, a Galra in spirit.

Yet when Keith finally caved to curiosity and attended the weekly initiation, the rumors proved true. The Champion fought with no less skill than he’d shown against the challenger, but he held back. Many of the initiates left the ring bloodied or unconscious, several so badly injured they would have to be shipped off to work camps, but none of them died.

 _Weakness_ , the crowd whispered. It was almost a curse among Galra. Weakness was a disease, after all. If the Champion was a weakling, he should have been eliminated. Yet none of the gladiators who fought in the Arena seemed to have the skill needed to defeat him.

Keith listened to the whispers with something deeply unsettling growing in his chest. Mercy was weakness; he’d learned that lesson well enough over the years. Mercy was the last defense of the coward.

Yet here in the Arena, it didn’t look like weakness. How could a coward defy his captors? How could a weakling continue to stand when every act of mercy brought more anger and scrutiny down on his shoulders?

It was a miracle his mercy hadn’t yet killed him.

And Keith returned, time and again, to watch weakness hold onto the title Champion. He watched, and he waited for the sword to fall. One of these days, the Champion’s mercy would betray him, and he would die.

Keith tried not to think about how much the thought scared him. He watched, holding his breath, and left each week awed and deeply disturbed.

The Champion’s continued success baffled Keith. Hadn’t it been mercy that had killed Keith’s mother twelve years ago? Wasn’t it mercy that had tripped Keith up so often during his training? In Zarkon’s empire, there was no room for compassion. The only way to survive was to focus on your own success and leave everyone else to worry about theirs. Doing otherwise opened the door to betrayal and opportunism.

It was basic, irrefutable reality, and watching the Champion flaunt it week after week left Keith feeling off-balance.

Soon anger overtook his shock. He ignored the challengers and inconsequential duels that filled the schedule, turning up in the stands once a week when a new group of gladiators entered the ring. He lurked in the shadows and watched as, one by one, the Champion spared the lives of each prisoner to stand before him.

He didn’t know exactly what it was that pushed him over the edge. Maybe the fact that Sendak had sent Haxus to inquire after Keith’s intentions moving forward—a subtle insult, but one that found its mark. Maybe it was that Keith hadn’t been sleeping well, the weight of the future and his own doubts pressing down on him whenever he slowed.

Maybe it was the anniversary of his mother’s death, a hot coal in the back of his mind as he watched the Champion’s matches.

Halfway through the final match, Keith turned and stormed out the door. He took a lift down to the prison level and stalked toward the vestibule. It was empty now, the final combatant facing off against the Champion, so only a single sentry guarded the door. It started to protest as Keith brushed past it, but fell silent as it caught sight of Keith’s rank emblem on his armor.

There were certain advantages to being a prince.

At the inner door, he passed a pair of guards dragging the last prisoner off the sand and back toward the cells. Keith didn’t spare them a glance, but kept walking, all his rage bent toward the figure standing on the far side of the Arena.

A hush fell over the stands, and Keith’s mood soured further. He knew what the other Galra would think of this. Prisoners were beneath an officers’ notice—especially a prince. It was perhaps the only thing that had spared the Champion’s life so far: those who fought him were too weak to defeat him, and those with the strength to triumph wouldn’t compromise their egos by doing so.

Keith was done with the games. He stepped up to the Champion’s sword, which the man had driven into the ground in the center of the Arena before retreating to the far door. Keith ran his hand over the sword’s hilt. It was an old blade, worn but sturdy. A respectable enough weapon.

When Keith looked up, he found the Champion staring back at him, crouched in preparation for a battle, eyes riveted to Keith’s.

Keith pulled the sword free and tossed it at the Champion’s feet. “Take it,” he said when the Champion hesitated.

Around Keith, the whispers in the crowd multiplied, and Keith grinned. He wondered how many of the spectators wished they’d had the courage to step into the ring and challenge the merciful Champion. He wondered how many were glad for the ranks that stopped them from doing just that.

Keith drew his mother’s knife from the sheath at his back, twirled it once to remind himself of its weight, then fell into a ready stance. “Prepare yourself, _Champion_.”

His grin widened as the human kicked the sword into the air and grabbed the hilt. Keith didn’t wait for the Champion to find his stance but charged in, dagger held in a reverse grip. His thoughts blazed with the knowledge that if he succeeded here, it would be only the second time he had killed another sentient being.

The fight went well at first. The Champion was strong but unused to Keith’s style of fighting. In the Arena—in most of Zarkon’s army—large weapons, long ranges, and heavy damage were ideal. Keith, who focused on speed, agility, and precision, was an outlier., and the Champion’s inexperience showed.

Beyond that, Keith was used to duels. Solo combat, first against robots, then against Galra, had been Keith’s obsession for the last two years. He wouldn’t delude himself into thinking he was the best duelist in Zarkon’s army, but he was skilled. The Champion’s other opponents could not say the same.

He pressed the Champion back, chipping away at the human’s endurance and landing shallow cuts where he could. Keith was too nimble for the Champion to land a hit on, and unlike the human, Keith wasn’t afraid to fight dirty. When he threw sand in the Champion’s eyes, he figured the battle was won.

He was wrong.

The Champion, half-blinded by the sand, caught Keith by surprise and tackled him to the ground, where his larger frame had Keith at a disadvantage. Fear clawed at Keith’s composure as the gladiator’s blade bit into his neck.

He saw the moment the Champion’s mercy got the better of him. The sword at Keith’s neck wavered, and Keith leaped on the opportunity, flipping his knife around and swinging in one last, desperate attack that cut a red line across the Champion’s face.

The Champion pinned Keith’s hand above his head and leaned again on his sword.

 _So this is it_ , Keith thought, vision narrowing to the twist of the Champion’s lips. His teeth were bared in an expression of pure loathing, his eyes wide and black as death itself.

Suddenly the Champion lurched back, staring at the crowd around them with a look of abject terror. Keith himself had forgotten his audience, but he knew at once what the Champion had realized: killing a Galra prince would only earn him a slow and painful death.

So the Champion wasn’t an idiot.

Keith was almost disappointed. Stupidity often masqueraded as courage, and mercy from a man too dense to realize the risk would have made the Champion’s success easier to swallow.

Instead, he was left just where he’d been before: a Champion who couldn’t let go of his compassion. Weakness—but also strength. Keith touched the thin, bloody line across his throat as he stood, wincing. The Champion _was_ strong; Keith couldn’t pretend otherwise. He stooped to pick up his mother’s knife and returned it to the sheath at his waist. Questions without answers spun through his mind.

He looked up and forced a smile. “I’m impressed,” he said to the Champion, who stood motionless a few feet away. “You should fight for us.”

Keith could taste the shock that radiated through the following silence.

“What did you say?”

Keith searched the Champion’s eyes. He didn’t know what had driven him to say what he had, except perhaps a desperate hope that it might reveal something about the Champion that would make everything fall back into familiar, predictable patterns.

“You should fight for us,” Keith repeated, as evenly as before. “Join the army. Your talent is wasted in the Arena.”

Ambition. If self-preservation didn’t motivate the Champion, then perhaps pride did. He killed those who challenged him, after all. Maybe it wasn’t mercy that stilled his hand in the initiate matches, but disdain. Galra often regarded themselves as too important to kill someone they deemed inconsequential. Surely the Champion was the same.

Rather than rise to Keith’s bait, though, the Champion curled his lip and spat on the ground at Keith’s feet.

“I’d rather die,” he hissed, just as guards appeared on either side to drag him back toward the door. The Champion put up no fight, and Keith watched in uneasy silence until the doors sealed shut between them.

_Weakness. Strength._

When had it become so hard to tell the two apart?

* * *

Lance tried not to think too hard about why Allura had asked him to go with Matt and Pidge. Did she expect trouble? If so, why hadn’t _she_ come this way? Was she expecting Lance to try to talk with Matt about the obvious impact this place was having on him? He hadn’t spoken since the group had split up, despite Pidge repeatedly asking if he was okay and Lance trying to make small talk to lighten the mood. Aside from (rarely) indicating which direction they should go at an intersection, Matt mostly just stared at his feet.

Maybe Allura had wanted to talk to Hunk about something. Maybe she just didn’t want to spend any time alone with Lance. (Though, again. Sending Lance and Hunk to the cells was an option.)

He was reading too much into it, he knew. He didn’t even really _care_ why she’d sent him this way. He was just bored, and thinking about Allura’s motives was much more pleasant than thinking about the rooms they were passing—though ignoring them was getting harder and harder as time went on.

At first, it had just been storerooms and open showers with spigots hanging from the ceiling over a tiled floor. The shadows cast by Lance’s headlamp were stark and elongated, giving the room a horror movie vibe. Matt’s eyes had darkened on seeing the showers, but it evidently wasn’t the site of any horrible nightmares, as they continued on without comment.

Matt had stopped for a little longer at a cluster of small closets. Most were locked, and Lance wouldn’t have known what was inside if not for the fact that the one at the end of the row had been smashed open, the metal door buckled so that it had stuck half-closed. The space inside was empty because of _course_ it was, a three foot square of disappointment.

Pidge carved their way into the others one at a time, but all the found was more darkness. When Pidge and Lance started to theorize about the strange closets, Matt broke his silence to tell them it was just for storage and that they should keep moving. He led the way out of the room, leaving the others no choice but to follow.

It quickly became obvious that the castle’s scanners had been right: the place was abandoned. If there’d been a crystal powering the complex, it was gone or dead now, plunging the complex into darkness and silence so complete Lance swore he could hear the walls sighing like the settling of an old house. Maybe the Galra had left prisoners behind— _maybe_. They certainly hadn’t stayed themselves.

The worst came when they neared the center of the complex. In one room Lance’s headlamp beam swept across a window running the length of the corridor, and he stepped up to it, cupping his hands around his eyes to try to see around the glare from his lamp.

“Is that… an operating room?” Pidge asked, their light joining Lance’s in the room beyond the glass.

It was hard to make out much about the space. There was a table in the center of the room, a metal stand beside it. Counters lined the far wall, and what looked like a sink. It could have been an operating room, but it also could have been a lab, or a break room, or a poker salon.

Well, maybe not poker, but whatever the Galra had instead.

“I don’t know,” Lance whispered. “Any ideas, Matt?”

When Matt didn’t answer, Lance turned. His headlamp lit Matt’s face: slack-jawed and paler than his armor. He stared past Lance at the operating room, or whatever it was, one hand curled into a fist at his throat, the other gripping his bayard in pistol form.

“Matt?” Pidge asked, taking a cautious step forward. A small, frightened noise escaped Matt, and Pidge froze, holding up their hands. “It’s okay, Matt. You’re okay.”

Matt didn’t answer, and Pidge shot Lance a frantic look. Lance licked his lips. “We should keep moving. Right?”

Pidge nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Matt? Matt?”

Slowly, Matt’s eyes drifted toward Pidge. He still seemed to be looking at something that wasn’t there, but he nodded slowly and followed Pidge away from the operating room. Lance brought up the rear, blushing as he realized that he’d drawn his own bayard.

“This place is way too creepy,” he muttered, forcing himself to let go of the weapon. “Get it together, Lance.”

At the end of the corridor, a door led them into what definitely was, or had been, an administrative area. Desks were arranged in neat rows, though they’d been cleared off. A few papers littered the ground, and some of the chairs had been knocked over and never righted. Around the outside of the room, doors opened into dark spaces beyond.

Lance left Pidge and Matt in the center of the room, where Matt dropped into one of the desk chairs and leaned his head on his arms while Pidge hovered over him. If Matt was going to say anything to anyone, it would be Pidge, Lance figured, so he went to poke through the outer rooms—larger offices, a meeting room with a viewscreen on one wall, now dark, a break room with moldy food in what Lance guessed was the Galra version of a fridge.

He didn’t find any papers, or any computers, in the first few rooms he checked. The Galra hadn’t just abandoned this place; they’d cleaned it out. Maybe they were afraid Matt would find his way back here. Maybe they _hoped_ he would and had set a booby trap to finish him off.

Lance shivered at the thought and kicked it to the curb. They hadn’t run into any booby traps yet. Probably Zarkon was just sick of having to run supplies out to the middle of nowhere. He’d shut down the prison here and moved the staff and prisoners somewhere closer to home… wherever ‘home’ was for an evil alien overlord.

Lance was just about to give up and return to the Holts when his headlamp illuminated something big, shiny, and high-tech. Lance stepped into the room and looked around. The machine took up the entire back wall of the room, but the console at the center of it all had something that looked like a keyboard, along with the controls for every arcade game ever made. He wondered idly if Galra liked video games, then turned back toward the main office.

“Hey, guys? I think I found something.”

After a long moment of silence Pidge and Matt showed up, both looking grim but a little more focused than before. Pidge stepped past Lance and bent to inspect the machine.

“It’s definitely the main computer,” Pidge said, sitting back on their heels. “It’s also definitely out of juice. Without the crystal that powers this place, I’m not gonna be able to get anything out of it.”

Lance frowned. “Can’t you just...” He waved his hands vaguely. “Hack it?”

The look Pidge gave him was answer enough.

“I should have thought of this,” Matt muttered. His voice was soft, but he was focused on the problem at hand and not whatever had happened to him before. Lance counted that as a victory. “We’ll need some kind of power source.”

“The castle?” Pidge asked.

Matt crossed his arms. “If we can land it close enough. Or find a crystal small enough to transport but big enough to power this thing.”

Lance glanced between them, frowning. Computers were most definitely not his area of expertise, but he crossed his arms and stared at the computer like he was trying to come up with a solution. Eventually, he shook his head. “Well, look, whatever we end up doing, it’s gonna have to wait, right? Let’s finish checking this place out before we backtrack to the castle.”

Pidge gave the computer a lingering look, but followed the others back into the office and through the far door—the only one Lance had yet to check. It took them to another hallway, wider than the others, and covered in lush carpeting.

“I guess we’re in the _director’s_ area now,” Lance muttered, sniffing in disdain. In any other context, the carpets and the etchings around the doors and the fancy metal lamps—sconces?--on the walls wouldn’t have looked _overly_ fancy, but here, after the cold, harsh halls of the prison, this hit like a slap in the face.

What was even more of a slap in the face was turning the corner and almost falling straight into a crater. Lance windmilled, letting out a startled yelp. Pidge’s bayard snaked around his shoulders and yanked him back from the edge into Matt’s waiting arms.

Lance sighed and grinned at the Holts. “Thanks for the save,” he said.

But neither of the others were looking at him. Lance followed their gazes to the crater. Now that he wasn’t in danger of falling to his death, he could see that the hole was absolutely massive. It dropped down twenty feet or more, a perfect half sphere cut through the building’s foundation into the dry rock below. The light of their headlamps didn’t make it to the far side of the hole. Some kind of gray plastic-y space tarp, held up by rickety metal scaffolding, had been stretched across the matching hole in the ceiling, camouflaging the damage from the sky.

Lance let out a long breathe as he took in the damage. “What the hell happened here?”

* * *

Sendak had found an Altean.

The news reached every corner of the _Predator_ within an hour of the bounty hunter’s arrival. Alteans were rare finds these days—not hunted near to extinction, as Zarkon would have the universe believe. Just harder to find than other races. Inborn camouflage and a cultural inclination toward caution would do that. Keith had heard whispers of the Altean resistance as far back as his third year of training.

Still, an Altean prisoner was noteworthy, and it sparked a flood of gossip that Keith tried to ignore. The rebel would be tortured for information and executed, like any other important prisoner. He wasn’t here to join Zarkon’s army, he wouldn’t be fighting in the Arena, and he certainly wouldn’t be paraded around in chains like Sendak’s pet, as some soldiers seemed to think.

But in the days following the Altean’s capture, certain rumors became reality. The prisoner was tortured—it wasn’t a public spectacle, but those in charge of the interrogation made no secret of their activity—but when the Questioners were through with him, no execution date was set. Galra soldiers whispered among themselves, more than a few placing wagers on the ultimate fate of the Altean.

Then Emperor Zarkon himself arrived on the _Predator_ , entourage in tow. Keith was a member of the party assembled to greet him, though he kept quiet and did his best to go unnoticed while Sendak captured the Emperor’s attention.

“It is true you have found an Altean, then?” Zarkon asked.

Sendak nodded. “I handed him over to my best Questioners, but he knows little that will be of use to us.”

A cold smile washed over Zarkon’s face. “No matter. When he dies that will be one fewer of that tiresome race clogging the sewers of my Empire. I trust you will make it entertaining.”

That very evening, every member of the ship’s crew gathered in the Arena to watch the execution. Zarkon’s own soldiers maintained the defenses, watching for a rescue attempt by other Alteans. Keith sat in the middle of a restless crowd, deafening cheers pounding at his skull as the Champion entered the Arena.

Keith had spent three months speaking with the man, trying to figure him out. The Champion rarely answered Keith’s questions, which didn’t bother Keith all that much, since Keith himself could never put into words exactly what it was he wanted to ask. _Who are you? Why are you the way you are? Why does it matter so much to me?_

Keith hadn’t realized, before their conversations, how young the human was. He was older than Keith, but not by much. If not for his months in the Arena, which had aged him both physically and mentally, Keith doubted he would have looked the part of Zarkon’s Champion.

Now the Champion surveyed the crowd with fear in his eyes. He froze when he spotted Zarkon, sitting alone in the front row on a special platform constructed for the occasion. Keith wondered if he knew who Zarkon was, or if he only knew that he was important, and therefore dangerous.

Either way, the Champion readied himself for an ambush as the guards opened the Challenger’s Door and shoved the Altean into the Arena.

Keith’s heart sank at the sight of him. He was a young man, brown-skinned with black hair cut short. The yellow markings beneath his eyes stood out like glowing crystals almost as pale as his wide eyes. He clutched the sword he had been given in shaking hands, though he stared at the blade like it was going to attack him.

This was not a warrior. He was like most prisoners fed into the Arena: young and fit, but otherwise unsuited to combat. How old was he? Younger than Keith, by his people's standards, hardly more than a child. He looked so scared.

Keith felt sick as the roar around him rose in pitch, the Galra working themselves into a frenzy, eager to watch the Altean die. Few of them would have ever seen an Altean in person before, but they had heard Zarkon’s version of history. How the Alteans were his sworn enemy. How they had ruled the universe and oppressed Galra before Zarkon’s rise to power. (Was any of it true, Keith wondered? Lately it seemed he couldn’t trust anything he’d learned in training.)

In the ring, the Champion stared at his opponent, his sword hanging limp at his side.

“Champion.” Zarkon didn’t raise his voice, but it cut across the Arena, silencing every voice within, and left the chamber waiting with baited breath. “Your challenger stands before you. Make me proud.”

The human glanced at the Altean, then turned back to Zarkon and narrowed his eyes. “And if I refuse?”

There was a collective intake of breath, and Zarkon growled in displeasure. “You know the rules of challenge. The fight does not end until at least one of you is dead.”

If the implicit threat in Zarkon’s words shook the Champion, he did not show it. His eyes burned with defiance as he stared up at Zarkon and, very deliberately, threw down his sword.

Keith’s mouth had run dry, and he stared at the back of Zarkon’s head, waiting for the explosion. What was the human thinking? Defiance was one thing. _This_ was pure suicide. No one stood up to Zarkon and lived. And for _what_? A boy the Champion had never met.

_Weakness._

The man standing down on the sand, head held high as he stared down the Emperor of half the known universe, was not a weak man.

Zarkon turned to the officers and attendants sitting near him. “Sendak,” he said lightly, as if the Champion’s rebellion didn’t warrant his anger. “Send him in.”

Sendak turned and spoke into a communciator in hushed tones as the Arena waited for Zarkon’s answer to the rebellion on the sands. It came seconds later in the sound of a door grinding open. The Champion wavered then, his confident mask slipping as he whirled toward the Champion’s Door.

A behemoth lumbered out, taller than most Galra and thicker through the trunk. It looked vaguely like a Balmeran, if that Balmeran had undergone extensive biotech modifications. Both arms and most of the creature’s back had been replaced with robotic parts that glowed with lines of violet Quintessence. The skin on its legs, normally tough and thick, sagged away from the muscle and bone beneath, some of it cracking and sloughing off, leaving vibrant red patches open to the air. Hairline fissures marred the creature’s carapace, and its single organic eye glowed yellow next to the red-lit cybernetic implant.

It screamed, a deafening roar that shook the supports around the edges of the room and sent the Altean scrambling for cover. The Champion stared in horror at the beast, his face draining of all color as the Balmeran began to charge.

Rolling aside, the Champion dove for his sword, coming up in a guard as the Balmeran swung its mechanical arm at his head. He caught the blow on his sword, but the force of the impact threw him backwards. He slammed against a stone column and dropped to the ground, dazed, as the Balmeran roared again.

The sound chilled Keith to the bone. He had never set foot on a Balmera himself, but he knew a fair amount about their inhabitants. His instructors had painted them as dull, compliant beings—but they _were_ sentient.

This thing was something else entirely. It fought without a clear strategy, but with a terrifying viciousness that kept the Champion on the defensive, retreating around the perimeter of the Arena and trying not to give his opponent a clear shot at him. It roared like a wild animal with no sign that it heard the Champion’s desperate attempts to calm it.

Zarkon’s scientists—or maybe Haggar’s druids—had created something altogether new using the Balmeran as a scaffold. It was fast, violent, and ruthless… and Keith wasn’t certain the Champion could defeat it.

He fought anyway, reminding Keith again of his skill. Though he was smaller, weaker, and slower than his opponent, the Champion was smarter, using the terrain to his advantage, confusing the Balmeran with noise and feints and tiny, darting strikes that annoyed the beast more than they harmed it. The crowds in the stands roared with every blow. Some cheered for the Champion, others for his death, but all watched the fight with rapt attention.

Keith sat still and silent, frozen with irrational fear for the Champion’s fate.

He saw the moment the tide shifted. The Champion had been doing well, luring the Balmeran toward a stone arch that Keith suspected the Champion meant to collapse on the Balmeran’s head. It would have severely disabled the beast, if not killed it outright.

But the Altean boy, who had so far had remained hidden and out of the way of the fight, chose the wrong moment to dash for safer cover. The Balmeran caught sight of the movement and turned, forgetting the Champion in favor of easier prey.

“No!” the Champion screamed, drawing the Altean’s attention.

The boy turned, recoiling as he saw the monster bearing down on him, metal claws raised to tear him apart.

Screaming in rage and desperation, the Champion gave chase. Both he and the Balmeran had slowed over the course of their fight, but the Champion seemed to have found new reserves of strength. He and the Balmeran reached the Altean at the same moment, and the Champion threw himself between the beast and the boy, bringing up his sword in a hasty block.

Keith heard bones snapping in the sudden silence.

Screaming, the Champion hit the sand, his right forearm a mangled, bloody mess beneath him. The Balmeran roared, rattling the crowd, who seemed to have lost their voice, whether from shock or horror or awe.

Keith held his breath and watched the Champion, urging him to stand, to end the match. It was foolishness. A child’s dream. The Champion had lost.

“Get up,” Keith whispered. “You’re stronger than this. You have to be stronger than this.”

The human struggled for a moment, but the movement jarred his shattered arm and he cried out as he fell back to the sand, rolling onto his side to cradle his arm.

The Balmeran stared down at him, seeming to contemplate his presence. Then it snorted, stepped over his still body, and advanced on the Altean.

The Champion looked up. His lips moved, but his voice did not reach to the stands.

The Altean’s back hit a stone slab and he glanced around for an escape. He found none. The Balmeran lumbered closer.

The Champion spoke again, his voice still indistinct. His left hand reached out and closed around the hilt of his sword.

The Balmeran raised both arms over the Altean’s upturned face.

“ _No!_ ” the Champion roared. He staggered to his feet and ran forward, blood dripping from his right arm to leave a trail behind him across the sand. The Balmeran froze at the shout and began to turn—but it was too late. The Champion arrived, throwing his full weight into a single, desperate swing.

The blade took the Balmeran in the neck, slipping between the carapace covering its head and the mechanical augmentations across its back. It screeched once, then cut off abruptly as the Champion’s blade separated its head from its body.

The Champion collapsed a split second after the Balmeran did.

He didn’t rise.

Chaos erupted in the stands, spectators talking over one another, Sendak shouting orders into the chaos. Guards rushed into the Arena. Two grabbed the Altean boy and dragged him out the Challenger’s Door. Another two grabbed the Champion by the arms and dragged him the opposite direction.

Keith shoved his way through the crowd toward the exit, his mind a roar of white noise. _How?_ he wondered. _Why? **Why?**_

A pair of druids sprinted away from the Arena, and Keith followed them to a medical bay where they had the Champion strapped to a table. His face was pale except where it was streaked with blood; his right arm was limp and misshapen, bone and blood showing through the broken skin. One of the druids grabbed a bone saw from a metal tray.

Keith took this all in distractedly as he stared at the Champion’s still form. Keith hadn’t moved beyond the doorway, and the druids filling the room turned toward him as though ready to hold him back.

“Why?” Keith hissed, staring at the Champion’s pale face. Then again, louder. “Why? _Why?!_ Why did you do that? _”_ He shouted obscenities and disjointed questions, hardly aware of what he was saying, until the druids wrestled him out of the room. When the door shut in his face, he pounded it with his fist. “ _Why?!_ ”

Anger surged through him, mysterious and unwelcome. He hated that he’d become so invested in the Champion. He hated that the man had chosen this path instead of taking Keith up on his many offers of freedom.

_Why would you sacrifice yourself for the Altean? Why would you choose the Arena over your freedom in the army? Why?_

_Why...?_

_Why do I care?_

* * *

By the following day, Haggar’s druids had finished their work on the Champion. His shattered right arm was gone from the elbow down, replaced with a cybernetic prosthetic of Haggar’s own design. It was stronger, sturdier, and more versatile than the arm he had lost, infused with Quintessence to make it into a weapon.

It looked wrong on the Champion’s body.

For three days, Keith came to the Champion’s cell and waited for him to wake. For three days, the man slept, his brow furrowed in pain and slick with sweat.

Hours passed in silence, Keith alone in a prison cell with a man whose name he didn’t even know. He was Zarkon’s Champion. He was Prisoner 117-9875. Sendak never bothered to learn the names of his captives, and Keith, for all the weeks of questions aimed at figuring the Champion out, had never thought to ask the most basic question of all.

If nothing else, those three days gave Keith time to think.

Was it weakness that had cost the Champion his arm? Any other Galra would say it was weakness. Mercy. Compassion. Self-sacrifice. These were not things Zarkon encouraged in his troops. They were liabilities, and they should be excised.

Except in the Champion, they were the exact opposite. Far from weakening him, his concern for the life of another had given him the strength to continue fighting, with more strength and speed than he’d had to begin with. It had cost him an arm, yes, but it had also saved his life—and the life of the Altean, if only temporarily. The boy had not been seen since the Champion saved him, and Keith could only assume he'd been executed.

Keith tried not to think about how he would break the news to the Champion.

He didn’t find many answers in those three long days. He didn’t know why the human fought to protect. He didn’t know how that made him stronger instead of weaker.

Keith did come to one conclusion, however: he admired this man. He admired his strength, his skill, his courage… even his compassion. It was not a Galra virtue, but Keith was beginning to think that might be another point in the Champion’s favor.

When the Champion woke on the third day, Keith set aside his unanswered questions. There would be time for that later. For now, there was only one thing he needed to know.

“My name’s Keith,” he said into the silence. “What’s yours?”

* * *

Yaltin was quiet that night, the first peace since Orgul had given her officers the three-day deadline. Luba had recalled all her troops except a few patrols in the canyons where the tunnel entrances lay.

Keith stood by the door of the small room he shared with Shiro, watching the man awkwardly. Shiro had hardly talked for the last several hours, hardly even acknowledged Keith’s presence beside him. He sat now on his bunk, boots tossed aside, armor in a heap on the floor. His left hand dangled between his knees, red and raw from a savage scrubbing in the bathroom sink.

“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Keith said lamely, toweling the back of his head. He’d barely had time to sleep and eat the last two days, and he’d been glad of the chance to wash the blood, sweat, and dirt from his fur. “Just a little longer and we’ll be off this rock.”

Shiro showed no sign of having heard him.

Keith bit his lip, letting the towel hang loose around his neck. He tugged irritably on the ends and avoided looking at Shiro. This wasn’t like him. This brooding, this silence. Shiro had always been introspective, but he hadn’t closed himself off from Keith in a long time.

Breathing a heavy sigh, Keith went to sit on the edge of his own bunk, facing Shiro across the narrow space between.

“I get it.”

Shiro looked up, but kept silent.

Keith tried to make himself look Shiro in the eye, but almost instantly his gaze dropped to Shiro’s hands. He’d washed them in the caves, cleaning off the violet Galra blood before Luba’s troops saw him and got suspicious. Then when they returned, he’d shrugged off Keith’s suggestion of a shower, muttering that he was tired.

When Keith had returned from debriefing, Shiro had been standing by the sink, steam rising from the basin as Shiro held the counter in a white-knuckle grip.

“I get it,” Keith repeated, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “Why this is so hard on you. It’s a good thing. You _shouldn’t_ feel good about killing people, even if they do deserve it.” Keith curled in on himself, thinking involuntarily of the coldness that came over him in battle. “The universe would be a better place if everyone were like you.”

“But they’re not,” Shiro said, and for the first time in four months, he sounded uncertain. “The army’s slaughtering the Yaltians. We’re the only ones who can stop it. I _need_ to stop it.”

Keith tried to think of something wise to say, but he’d never been one for wisdom. “I… Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “We have to stop this. We do. But… that doesn’t mean you have to enjoy it.”

“So I’m supposed to keep fighting? _How_? What good am I to anyone if I keep second-guessing myself? What good does it do to hesitate when I already _know_ what I have to do?”

Keith grabbed his towel in both hands and twisted, his claws digging into the rough fabric. “What good does it do?” He laughed, the sound tasting bitter on his tongue. “It keeps you from doing something you’ll regret.” He looked up and found Shiro staring at him, brow furrowed. “We both know what we have to do to win. _You_ know what we might do that makes winning not worth the cost.”

“Keith...”

Shaking his head, Keith tossed his towel aside. “Sorry. I know it can’t be easy, but...” He lifted his shoulders helplessly. “I hope you hold onto that part of you. It’s brought us this far, hasn’t it?”

Shiro’s shoulders sagged, and a weak smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it has.”

* * *

The paladins regrouped in the corridor on the far side of the crater. Lance, Pidge, and Matt had worked their way around through the empty hangar, past the shattered remains of the Galra crystal, and back through more cleaned-out offices to the corridor across from where they started. Hunk and Allura met them there with a bit of guidance from Coran.

“We’ve been everywhere,” Allura said, giving Matt a pitying look. He pretended not to notice. “There’s no one here.”

Anger simmered beneath the surface of Matt’s composure. Allura didn’t deserve it, he knew, but the ones who _did_ deserve it weren’t here. This place was filled with memories, many of them buried so deeply in Matt’s mind he hadn’t recognized them until the sight of a familiar room brought them rushing to the forefront.

“Well _something_ did this,” he snapped, waving a hand at the crater. “It was probably one of those monsters they sent after us.”

Pidge’s fingertips ghosted across Matt’s elbow, but he shook them off. Beside them, Lance bit his lip and stared at Allura, obviously waiting to hear what she had to say. Matt tried not to resent it.

“I’m sorry, Matt,” Allura said gently. “There’s no information. No prisoners. No power. I don’t know what you’re hoping to find.”

“There has to be _something_ ,” Matt said, his voice wavering traitorously.

Pidge looked up at him, then tapped their comm. “Hey, Coran….”

“Yes, Pidge?”

“Remember how I integrated those BLIP-tech sensors into our suits? Now that we’re down on the planet, it should give your scanners a little more finesse. Just to be sure, could you run another scan?”

“Of course. Just give me a tick here and...”

Allura closed her eyes. “There’s no point, Pidge. This place is--”

“Quiznak!”

Matt’s heart faltered in his chest. “You found something?”

“Yes,” Coran said. “Three biolife readings—faint, but distinct. They’re--” Coran paused, confusion audible in the silence that filled the comms. “They’re _outside_ the prison complex. Half a mark west of your current location.”

“Outside?” Allura demanded. “Are you sure?”

“Very.”

“But… that’s impossible.” Allura turned away from the others, raising a hand to her helmet. “I saw the crystal they were using to power this complex. It wouldn’t support life that far away. If this crystal was shattered more than a couple days ago—and I’m fairly certain it was, considering how little Quintessence remains in the fragments—no one from this base would still be alive. And even if they were, why would they head _away_ from the only civilization on this planet?”

Coran sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you. There seems to be a cluster of small structures out that way; maybe one of them is a life-support unit.”

Matt’s heart was pounding now, his breath stagnant in his chest. Small structures, separate from the main complex. Far enough away that the crystal’s energy didn’t reach them.

“The E-dep chambers.”

Matt didn’t realize he’d spoken the words aloud until he felt the weight of four pairs of eyes on him. Silence filled the corridor.

“You know about them?” Coran asked. The other paladins looked simultaneously glad that someone had asked the question and anxious about the answer.

Matt weighed his words carefully. There were things the others didn’t need to know, things Matt himself wasn’t ready to talk about. “Extended deprivation,” he said. “It was one of the experiments the Galra carried out here. I… they…” He swallowed the memories pressing against his mind. “The Galra used those chambers to study the effects of Quintessential deprivation on different species.”

Allura’s face was a mask of horror. “That—that’s _awful_.”

Hunk’s eyes darted toward her, while Lance’s remained fixed on Matt. He refused to look at Pidge, whose eye were burning a hole in the side of his head. Likely none of them knew what Quintessential deprivation meant, not really, and Matt hoped they never found out.

“But…” Coran’s voice on the comms wasn’t as openly horrified as Allura’s, but it was equally shaken. “That’s a death sentence.”

 _Not for me, Matt_  thought. Aloud he said only, “We might still be able to save whoever’s out there.”

Silence accompanied them as they hiked to the west side of the complex, where Pidge cut another door in the wall. The terrain outside looked bleaker than before, now that they were heading away from shelter. No plants grew on Vel-17. Even the ground seemed drained of color, the stones painted all in shades of gray and dull tan. Jagged cliffs soared up in the distance, but the miles in between were so flat it hardly looked natural.

The farther they got from the prison complex, the harder it became to keep walking, but Matt grit his teeth and pushed himself onward. _Dark. Cold._ There were people in the chambers. _An endless cycle of nightmares yielding to the hell of waking._ Matt wasn’t going to abandon them. He couldn’t. _Let me out, let me out, let me **out!** _

By the time the E-dep chambers appeared from the featureless gray landscape, the paladins were practically on top of them. Three metal coffins, smooth silvery surface dulled by dust and grime, lay side by side. Two were similar in size to the castle-ship’s cryo-pods: six feet long and perhaps three across. The third was larger, built for the universe’s more physically impressive residents. Each lay in a recess in the ground, only a few inches rising above the stone around it.

_They’d sedated him in the cell block, so he was only distantly aware of the journey out into the still, cold air. Claws grasping at his arms and legs. A plastic mask pressed over his mouth and nose. Some corner of his mind registered the sounds around him—grunts of effort, feet scraping against stone—and knew that meant Vel-17 had an atmosphere, though the mask said it wasn’t breathable. Or maybe they just wanted to keep him calm._

_He did feel strangely light, now that he thought about it, and he couldn’t muster any sense of urgency or fear as he was lowered into a hole in the ground. Thin padding surrounded him on all sides, and the Galra worked quickly to attach sensors to his head, his hands, his chest. Something pricked his arm. He stared up at the sky, deep blue dotted here and there with the first glimpse of stars. It was… nice._

_The hands retreated, pneumatics hissed, and he was plunged into darkness._

Matt closed his eyes, digging his nails into his palm. That was the past. It was done. He was _here,_  he was _free_ , he needed to _stop thinking about what had happened to him._

He took a deep breath and forced himself to look at the E-dep chambers. They looked larger than his memories, and smaller at the same time.

“Matt?” Pidge whispered, too low for the others to hear.

Matt wanted to smile for them, but he couldn’t will his face to move. They knew. (Could they know?) Matt stepped forward, knelt between the two smaller chambers. The control panels glowed softly, and he remembered someone saying they ran on power cells rather than Quintessence. With shaking hands, Matt pressed the door release so that first one chamber, then the next, hissed open. Allura did the same with the third chamber, and Matt stood back.

He couldn’t have said what race the prisoners were, though they all seemed to have the same form. Each was humanoid, blue skin pale and shriveled from their time in the chambers. Their arms ended in three-fingered hands and as they shifted, sensors and IVs retracting into the chamber walls, Matt saw bony ridges running parallel to their spines. Cybernetic augmentations further warped their appearance—for one, a pair of thick arms; for another, a mask on the face that included a pair of glowing red eyes. The third alien’s body was covered in a network of thin, flexible metal, like synthetic nerves running down their spine and limbs and across the crown of their skull.

The worst of it was the way their skin seemed to slough off as they stirred, as though they were rotting from the inside.

They opened their eyes, all three in perfect sync, all three staring up at the paladins with hollow eyes—two red, four blank white. Matt’s heart clenched in his chest. He backed up, a scream trapped in his throat, and reached out blindly to grab Pidge’s arm.

The prisoners’ hands grasped the edges of the E-dep chambers and heaved, propelling them into the air. They bellowed, horrendous, deafening screeches that rattled Matt’s teeth and shattered the silence of the dead world.

Matt spun, dragging Pidge along with him. “Run!” he shouted. Lance stumbled along beside him, head turned to stare at the beasts, who landed beside the chambers with enough force to shake the ground. Matt yanked hard on Lance’s arm.

“We have to get to the Lion,” Allura said, keeping pace on Lance’s other side. Hunk lagged a few steps behind Pidge, his bayard out but not yet activated.

A scream was the only warning they had before one of the creatures dropped from the sky, tearing Pidge out of Matt’s grasp. Pidge yelled, summoning their bayard and slashing at the thing, while Allura and Lance held Matt back.

“Pidge!” he screamed. “Let me go. Pidge!”

“I’m fine,” Pidge shouted back, scrambling away from the creature, which retreated under the threat of Hunk’s laser barrage. “Keep running!”

Matt’s gut told him to fight his way back toward his sibling, but the other two creatures had joined the first, forming a wedge between the two groups. Already the distance between them had grown to nearly fifteen feet, the creatures hissing and snapping at the paladins on either side of the divide.

Reluctantly, Matt let himself be dragged away.


	14. What Remains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... The battle for Yaltin is taking its toll on Shiro, who's struggling to cope with the guilt. Keith remembered how he came to know Shiro and offered him some encouragement. Meanwhile the paladins traveled to Vel-17, an abandoned prison planet where Matt was held prisoner for a year. In the E-dep chambers, where experiments in Quintessential deprivation were carried out, they found three monsters. Now separated, the paladins attempt to make their way back to the Green Lion and escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for genocide/mass murder (the actual deaths are not shown) and asphyxiation/strangulation (not resulting in death.)

Shiro woke the day of Orgul’s deadline more settled than he’d felt for a long time. It was the calm of the Champion, a hyperfocused mindset that left no room for guilt. _Save who you can. Kill those you must. Survive._

He wouldn’t—couldn’t—abandon Deyra, Phana, and the other Yaltians.

Keith watched him as they left their quarters for the briefing area. Shiro knew he was thinking about yesterday, and he wished he could explain. He wished he could find the words to describe what it was like to live with one foot still in the Arena, to have faces—hundreds of faces—haunting his dreams, watching him from the darkness of the tunnels as he fought. When Galra lay moaning and dying around him, it was hard to think of them as enemies. Not when _opponent_ and _victim_ were so closely linked in his memories.

He wished he’d known the name of the young Nyxt he’d killed. Maybe then he’d stop seeing innocent blood filling the cracks in his Galra arm.

“How...are you feeling?” Keith asked slowly. He sounded more timid than Shiro had ever heard him.

“I’m fine.” It was a knee-jerk response, and Keith’s frown only deepened. Shiro breathed in and released it slowly, sending some of his tension with it. He offered Keith an apologetic smile. “Really, I’m doing better. I was just a little tired yesterday. It’s been a long week—for both of us, I’m sure. Don’t worry; it won’t happen again.”

Keith seemed unsatisfied. “Shiro, I—you--” He paused, ears flicking irritably. After a moment he huffed, ducking his head. “I trust you.”

Shock stopped Shiro in his tracks. Keith continued on for several steps before he, too, stopped. Shiro stared hard at the back of his head. “Where’s this coming from?”

Keith’s shoulders lifted, then slumped. “I just… I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing. I know what the other Galra would say, and I know they’re wrong, but… I’ve never known anything else. I want to help the Yaltians, and I’ll keep fighting to the end, but Shiro, if you think we should be doing this another way, I’ll follow you.” He turned then, luminous eyes searching Shiro’s face.

His expression hit Shiro like a sword to the gut, leaving him breathless and stunned. It had been such a long time since anyone had looked at him like that. With trust, admiration. Expectation.

Shiro didn’t know if he could be what Keith wanted him to be. He’d been a leader once, respected and praised, but the Arena had chewed that man up and left him changed. Sometimes Shiro didn’t even recognize himself. Who was he outside the walls of the Arena? Could he ever go back to being the man he was before?

 _Do what you need to do_.

Shiro smiled at Keith, trying to project confidence and calm. “Thanks, Keith. That means a lot.”

By the time they reached the briefing room, it was already packed with officers, and Shiro found a spot along the back wall where he could think. Something was changing today, but it didn’t necessarily mean an end to the fighting—and in that case, they needed to think about the future of this planet.

Shiro’s thoughts had kept him up late into the night, and one thing was clear: He’d been going about this all wrong. From the moment he set foot on Yaltin’s surface, he’d been playing by the rules of the Galra army. _Victory or death_ , wasn’t that what they always said? He’d treated this fight like a match in the Arena, where staying on top was the only way to protect those depending on him.

But Shiro couldn’t beat an army. The Yaltians were outnumbered and overpowered, and prolonging the war was only costing them more lives. He had to stop thinking like a gladiator and start thinking like a general. The war was a lot bigger than this one fight.

So what if they stopped trying to win? They’d delayed Orgul’s progress toward Earth as much as could be expected under the circumstances; the priority now had to be keeping as many Yaltians alive as possible and preserving their chance for freedom. The nature of the tunnels made it impossible for Luba to know how many Yaltians were still there. Could they escape somehow? Stage a victory for the Galra, retreat to unoccupied land, join forces with the other Yaltians…

If Orgul thought she’d won, the army would withdraw, leaving mostly sentries to hold the planet. If the Yaltians formed their own army, if Shiro and Keith helped them iron out the strategies, they might be able to retake their planet. There was even a chance Shiro and Keith could somehow bring Voltron’s attention to Yaltin after they’d moved on.

Shiro’s heart beat against his ribs. Half-forgotten lessons from the Garrison began to resurface, and he found himself running through tactics in his mind. This could actually work. True, he wouldn’t be here to protect the Yaltians, but they were smart and they were brave and they knew how to work together. With Keith’s knowledge of the Galra army and Shiro’s Garrison training, they could equip the Yaltians to fight their own battle.

He found himself smiling, fingers drumming against his metallic arm. Energy thrummed within him, strange yet somehow familiar. For once when he closed his eyes it wasn’t the sands of the Arena he saw, but the library at the Garrison. The familiar mess of his apartment. The stars, crystal clear out in the desert. Study dates with Matt, training for the Kerberos mission, late nights running battle simulations to test himself against the greatest commanders in Garrison history.

Now if they could just get this briefing over with, Shiro could get down to business.

“Everybody shut up and pay attention!”

Shiro straightened as conversation cut off. The Galra swiveled in unison toward the display screen at the front of the room, where Lieutenant Luba now stood, ears flat against her head, one hand dancing restlessly on the hilt of her sword. Her lip was pulled back into a snarl, and her gaze roamed restlessly around the room. It rested on Keith longer than most, and without meaning to, Shiro activated his Galra arm.

“New orders from Commander Orgul,” Luba said curtly. Her hand tightened around her sword and Shiro paused in the middle of deactivating his arm. Something was wrong. Something was-- “We’re pulling out.”

A ripple of shock spread through the room, followed quickly by discontented grumbles.

Luba talked over the top of the noise. “Get your troops to the shuttles. We leave in one hour.”

With that, she turned and stalked out the door, leaving a stunned silence in her wake. Coldness stole over Shiro’s body as his arm went dark, and he shot a frantic look at Keith, who looked equally troubled.

“Could be a good thing,” he muttered. The words sounded hollow to Shiro’s ears, and he suppressed a shudder. “Maybe…” Keith stopped, glancing around the room. “What do you want to do?”

Shiro thought of the Yaltians, waiting in the caves for Shiro and Keith’s arrival. It would take an hour just to reach them; if they went, Orgul’s ships would leave them behind. If the army really was abandoning the invasion, Keith and Shiro would be stuck as Orgul continued on her path toward Earth.

“I don’t think we have a choice in this,” Shiro muttered. “Let’s pack up and get to the ships.”

He tried not to dwell on the queasy feeling in his gut.

* * *

Hunk ran.

He didn’t remember how long he’d been running, how long the Galra monstrosity had been chasing them, with its horrible rasping breath filling the darkness and that howl that made Hunk’s skin crawl. All he knew was that his side hurt, his lungs burned, and his heart would very much like to be on another planet—with or without the rest of him.

At another blood-curdling scream from behind, Hunk pivoted toward the doorway illuminated by Pidge’s headlamp. The monster skidded past the door, cybernetic claws screeching against the metal floor. Pidge twisted as they ran, bayard humming with electricity, and slashed the door controls. The door slammed shut a split second before the creature reached it, and Hunk felt the _thud_ rattle his teeth.

Pidge and Hunk didn’t stay to see how long it took the creature to break through. From past experience, the answer was probably less than ten seconds. Guess that came from having two massive robotic arms attached to its body.

“We can’t keep this up,” Hunk panted, grabbing onto the wall as they careened around a corner. Pidge said nothing, and Hunk figured that was as good as an agreement.

They’d both been through training at the Garrison, of course; running was hardly new to them. (It was also surprisingly easy when the alternative was getting eaten by an undead Galra experiment. For once Hunk and his anxiety were one hundred percent on the same page.) Pidge was faster than Hunk, but they’d always been a sprinter, where Hunk was built for endurance. If _he_ was slowing down, Pidge had to be close to collapse.

Behind them, metal screamed, buckled, and clanged against the wall.

Hunk put on a burst of speed, catching up to Pidge, who stumbled and caught themself against the wall. Hunk paused to help them, and in that moment the creature rounded the corner, spotted the pair of them, and shrieked.

Heart pounding, Hunk stepped in front of Pidge, summoned his bayard, and opened fire.

The creature didn’t even break stride as it swerved aside and leaped for the wall. It’s mechanical claws bit into the wall and it scrambled up, over, and around Hunk, landing behind him—close enough to swipe at him.

A thin cord wrapped around Hunk’s ankle, and he was pulled aside, skidding into a dark room.

“Hurry up!” Pidge shouted, darting past him. Aside from their two headlamps, Pidge’s bayard was the only source of light in the room, and it cast odd shadows on Pidge’s face as they dove for the door controls. The creature lunged. Pidge’s bayard fried the control panel, and the door slammed down crushing the creature’s outstretched arm. It screamed, and the hand visible on this side of the door twitched. The darkness around Hunk buzzed with white noise, and he felt like he was floating in outer space, white crackles like stars burning at the edge of his vision.

Pidge rounded on him, shouting something—something--

“--the desk! _Hunk_! Help me move the desk!”

Hunk’s panic-fogged mind finally caught up with Pidge’s words as they put their back against a hulking metal desk and shoved it toward the door. It lurched an inch, then stuck as Pidge’s footing slipped. The creature slammed against the door.

“ _Hunk!_ ”

Hunk was already there, dismissing his bayard so he could grab the edge of the desk with both hands. He planted his feet and heaved, sliding the desk toward the door. He flipped it on end at the last second so the desktop covered the entirety of the door, then turned and began searching for more furniture.

His headlamp roved over a darkened lab, most of the space taken up by counters bolted to the floor and covered in flasks, petri dishes, and unidentifiable machines. There were a few stools, which Hunk tossed on the flimsy barricade, and a rolling cart, which Hunk flipped over and wedged against the underside of the desk.

The banging continued, amplified now by the rattling of the furniture as the door shook. Hunk glanced around again, but there was little more he could add to the barricade. He backed away from the door, summoning his bayard, and scanned the room for another exit. There was none.

Opposite the door, Pidge leaned back against a counter and slid to the floor, breathing hard. They pressed a hand to the side of their helmet. “Matt, are you there? Allura, Lance?”

“I’ve got them on the castle’s scanners,” Coran offered. “They’re still together. Still moving. What’s going on down there?”

“Monsters,” Pidge said simply. “ _Matt_. Talk to me!”

There was a moment of silence, and then Lance’s voice came over the comms, clipped and tense. “Now’s _really_ not a good time, Pidge, what do you want?”

Pidge looked up at Hunk, who drifted over, though he stayed standing, his nerves far too fried to sit still. He glanced at the door, and winced as the creature slammed against the metal yet again.

“Just trying to figure out a plan,” Pidge said. “We’ve got to get out of here, and fast.”

“No, _really_?” Lance snapped. “I hadn’t rea—augh!”

The sound of lasers, faint but frantic, filled Hunk’s ear, and his breath caught in his throat. “Lance? _Lance_?”

“I’m fine, buddy,” Lance said with forced levity. “But, uh.” Another burst of laserfire. “Kinda got my hands full. Let me know if you come up with a plan, cause we’re kinda screwed on our end.”

Hunk opened his mouth to say something, but faltered, mind running blank. All he could hear was the creature trying to get at them. _Thud. Thud. Thud._ Hunk shuddered with each one, crumpling in on himself and shrinking back against the counter.

Pidge’s hand on his arm grounded him, and he forced a smile for them.

“You know something?” Hunk said, voice shaking worse than his knees. “Lance always wanted me to play _Left 4 Dead_ with him, and it’s exactly things like this that made me say no.”

Pidge chuckled, leaning their head back against the cabinet. Their eyes fluttered shut. “Never had a problem with horror games myself. Not so sure that’ll be true after this.”

* * *

Lance’s bayard felt like a jet engine in his hand as he fired off a few more shots at the creature trying to eat Allura’s face, its cybernetic eyes glowing crimson. It was funny—he hadn’t realized his rifle could overheat, though if there was ever a time for it to do so, it was now. He’d been firing as fast as it would let him for longer than could be considered healthy. He didn’t care how magical the gun was, it was generating little bolts of light hot enough and dense enough to burn through solid metal. It was allowed to get a little toasty.

Allura grabbed the creature’s wrist and spun around it, pinning its arms behind its back. It thrashed, twisting its neck to try to bite her, but she grit her teeth and wrestled it to the ground, then shot Lance a hard look.

“Don’t worry about me. Go help Matt.”

“R-right.” Lance shifted his grip on the gun, trying not to focus on how uncomfortably warm the barrel was, even through his gloves. Matt was fighting at the far end of the corridor, his position marked by his helmet’s lamp, which shone directly on the gleaming white, razor sharp teeth in the second creature’s mouth.

Matt’s sword sparked as it ground against the creature’s claws. Lance didn’t know what these things’ skin was made of, but it was scary tough, to the point that Matt could hardly draw blood, even in the rare instance he managed to land a direct hit.

Lance raised his rifle and took aim. (It was so much easier before, when they were far away and he didn’t have to worry about hitting his friends.) Matt broke away from the creature for an instant, stumbling back, fear warring with fatigue on his face.

Lance took the shot.

His laser struck the creature right in the heart—or at least, where the heart would have been on a human. Apparently these creatures were built different, or else were just plain _tougher_ , because the shot didn’t seem to do much. Oh, sure, the thing stumbled a little and screamed (more rage than pain). But in the next instant, it was on top of Matt again, bringing both arms down on his shield in an overhead swing that made Matt’s knees buckle.

Swearing, Lance raised his rifle to his shoulder again and waited for another shot.

Before an opening came, Allura cried out. Something hit the floor with a sickening _thud_ that made the hairs on the back of Lance’s neck stand on end. He started to turn--

The creature Allura had been fighting tackled Lance, knocking the wind from his lungs. His bayard dropped from his hand, deactivated, and spun away into the darkness. But he didn’t have long to worry about that. His back hit the wall, and the creature held him there with a hand around his throat.

As his lungs started to tighten, Lance lashed out, kicking, clawing at the thing's hands, wincing as the creature pressed harder on his neck, squeezing him against the wall until he thought if the wall didn’t snap, then his neck would have to. His headlamp illuminated Allura for an instant as she picked herself up off the floor. It wasn’t long enough for Lance to pick out any real details, but she was listing to one side, and—maybe it was just his mind playing tricks on him—he thought he saw a streak of red on the white backdrop of her armor.

The creature roared in Lance’s face. He hadn’t needed to get that close a look at the inside of the monster’s throat, and what he saw made him wish the oxygen deprivation would just hurry up and knock him out.

His fingers didn’t seem to get the memo, though, and kept prying at the monster’s claws with more urgency. Not that it helped. He could barely get a grip on the slick, tough skin of its hand, and even if he could, he doubted he’d have the strength to make it budge. Hell, he’d landed a few solid kicks in the middle of all his mindless flailing, and all that had accomplished was making his toes hurt.

He was going to die.

The realization slid into his mind like black ice: cold and almost unnoticed until he was suddenly careening off Life Street into the ditch of hopelessness. He held onto the creature’s wrist with shaking hands and hung limp in its grip, staring at its teeth as the darkness of Vel-17 stole its way across his vision, consuming everything but the twin flames of the creature’s eyes.

He was going to die, and all he could think was, _I can’t believe I made fun of Val for having a zombie survival kit._

A streak of light appeared from the darkness. Something white passed into his headlamp’s beam.

The creature lurched, yanking Lance away from the wall. He swung, suspended in empty air for an instant before the hand at his throat vanished.

Lance hit the ground hard, legs buckling and cold metal floor rushing up to meet him. He coughed, curling in on himself instinctively. Allura quickly knelt beside him, a hand on his shoulder, her eyes wide and worried. Lance would have gone for a smooth one-liner if he’d been able to breathe without his throat feeling like he’d shoved an angry cat down it.

“Lance, are you all right? Can you stand?”

Rather than try to speak, Lance just nodded and pushed himself up. Allura grabbed his arm, and he let her help him to his feet. As soon as he’d found his balance, she released him, pressing his bayard into his hand. Matt backed toward them, a wild look in his eyes, sword shaking as he held it before him.

Both monsters stalked toward them, moving with a strange, fluid grace, like two-legged lions hunting wounded gazelle. (Which was _so_ not fair. Lance was a paladin of Voltron, _he_ was supposed to be the lion in the room.)

Matt kept backing away from the creatures, moving slowly, as though they might not attack if he didn’t spook them. Though… actually, maybe he was right. The creatures seemed to be taking their sweet time about finishing the three of them off. Lance doubted it was because the things were scared; they barely seemed scratched from all the fighting, while Matt had an ugly bruise on his jaw, Allura was bleeding from a cut above her eye, and Lance had almost been strangled by a zombie knock-off.

“Matt, Lance, get ready to run,” Allura whispered. Lance started to turn toward her, a question forming on his lips.

Then a metal door came sailing over his head, knocking both monsters to the floor. Allura grabbed the other paladins by the wrist and shoved them ahead of her with an entirely unnecessary shout of, _Run!_

Lance ran, bayard reverting to its inactive form. After just a few seconds, Coran came on the comms, his voice frantic. “You’re going the wrong way!”

“ _What?_ ” Allura cried.

Lance called up the Altean GPS embedded in the wrist of his armor and checked their location. “Shit,” he hissed, before dissolving into another coughing fit. Matt grabbed his arm and kept him running, which was appreciated, since otherwise Lance probably would have run head-first into a wall while his lungs tried to crawl out through his mouth.

Coran was right. It was hard to tell where you were going in a dark, unfamiliar prison complex where everything looked the same and a couple of nightmarish monsters were right on your tail, but they’d managed to make it halfway to Pidge and Hunk’s markers near the place where they’d left the Green Lion.

Now, however, they were headed more or less the way they’d come, putting more distance between them and escape.

Allura muttered something that sounded a lot uglier than _quiznak_. “Pidge, Hunk, come in.”

“Allura.” There was a note of relief to Pidge’s voice, though it didn’t take off the edge of tension. “Are you all okay? Have you found anything that might help with these things?”

“I’m afraid not.” Allura glanced over her shoulder as they approached a cross-corridor. It didn’t go the way they wanted to go, but Allura turned anyway. Lance considered arguing. Then he considered the monsters on their tails and figured _away_ was always the right direction. “Actually, we’ve got a slight problem. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to make it to the Green Lion.”

Pidge sucked in their breath. “ _What?_ ”

“The creatures are blocking our path to your side of the building,” Allura explained. “If you can reach your lion, take off. We may need you to come to us.”

“What about Coran?” Hunk asked.

Coran was already grunting a negative. “The castle’s much too large for something like this. I could set down outside the prison, but that wouldn’t change much, and it would take too long to get to a pod and launch it. I’m afraid it has to be the Green Lion.”

“Right.” Lance didn’t miss the doubt in Pidge’s voice (probably because Lance was also dealing with a robeast-sized helping of that same doubt.) “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

* * *

_Thud._

_Thud._

_Thud._

Pidge shot a nervous glance toward the barricade, which groaned under the force of the creature’s attack. Through a lull in the thudding, they heard the sound of metal on metal, a tooth-rattling shriek like a steak knife on china.

Beside them, Hunk screwed his eyes shut and buried his face in his knees.

“I’m done,” he muttered. “That’s it. Goodbye. I quit. Sorry, but not really because this is a freaking _joke_. I joined the Garrison to fix ships, not to star as first victim in a horror movie.”

“It’s gonna be fine,” Pidge said distractedly, sweeping their headlamp around the lab. There had to be something here they could use. The Galra had built this place; there were bound to be weapons, or maybe some chemicals Pidge could use to make a bomb.

Hunk lifted his head to glare at them. “Uh, _no._ It’s not. Nothing about this is headed toward fine-ville, Pidge. We’re stuck in a lab, and the only way we’re getting out is by going _through_ the Galra Nosferatu out there—no, wait. Scratch that. _I’m_ only getting out that way. _You_ are the size of a cat and can probably crawl out through the air ducts.”

“I’m _not_ crawling out through the air ducts, Hunk,” Pidge said, glossing over the fact that they had, in fact, noticed two vents large enough to crawl through, one pointed back toward the monster, the other headed more or less toward Green. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

“Maybe you should.” Hunk’s voice wavered, and he laughed feebly, waving his hands over his head. “I mean, maybe Allura’s got the right idea. The lions might have enough fire power to destroy these things, right? And I mean, you might be able to get there and back before that thing makes it through the door. You might even manage to find me and punch a hole in the roof without completely crushing me. We could get lucky. Or else, hey, you’d be able to get to the others that much faster. It’s a win-win, really.”

“ _Hunk_.”

Hunk’s mouth snapped shut, and he looked up at Pidge. There was something vulnerable about that look, a primal terror that had crossed the line into tearful resignation. Pidge averted their gaze, scraping their thumbnail across the textured grip of their bayard in a comforting rhythm, back-and-forth, back-and-forth.

“We’re getting out of here.”

Hunk just kept staring at Pidge; they could feel his gaze on the side of their head, burning. They closed their eyes and bit their tongue before they could snap at Hunk to _stop looking at me like that_.

Since when had _Pidge_ been put in charge? _I’m not a leader_ , they wanted to scream. _I’m not a soldier. I’m just a computer nerd who wanted to find their family._ There was a big difference between hacking Garrison computers and making life-and-death decisions in an abandoned prison overrun with monsters on an alien planet.

Pidge wished Matt were here, or Allura. Hell, even Lance knew how to take charge. _He_ was the pilot. _He_ was the one who was supposed to make these kinds of decisions.

Tapping their bayard restlessly against their thigh, Pidge got up and paced the length of the lab. They’d just have to treat this like a logic problem. Locked room, limited resources. Only one way out besides the air vents, but those were off the table. Pidge wasn’t leaving Hunk. Unless maybe they used the vent over the door to get out and distract the monster long enough for Hunk to make a break for it?

No. No way. Pidge wouldn’t last a minute against that thing alone, and they risked getting separated from Hunk anyway, even if they _did_ survive.

There had to be another option.

Pidge’s eyes landed on the equipment lining the lab counters. A quick walk down the line showed mostly things Pidge didn’t recognize, but one of them looked like a centrifuge, another might have been an incubator. The cabinet in the corner held a dozen or so burners—simple ones like in the Garrison’s student labs: little more than metal cylinders with a rubber hose on one end and an adjustable nozzle to control the size of the the flame.

Pidge spun, aiming their headlamp at the lab table in the middle of the room. Everything was so much sleeker than they were used to, but now that they were looking for it, the setup looked an awful lot like what Pidge was used to. Small sinks with spouts recessed into the basin, outlets unlike anything on Earth, and spaced every so often along the counter…

Gas valves.

Heart pounding, Pidge reached out and twisted the nearest valve. Gas hissed through the nozzle, invisible but just as acrid as Pidge would expect—a little more so, even, than propane. It burned their nostrils as they breathed, and they quickly drew back, gagging.

Still, a grin tugged at the corner of their mouth. “Hey, Hunk? I think I’ve found our way out.”

* * *

The only sound for a long time was the pounding of footsteps against the floor and, some distance behind, faint screaming.

Lance’s mouth was dry, his throat on fire, his chest aching with the need for more air. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up. So far, adrenaline had kept him going—kept them all going, probably, because Matt looked like he was in even rougher shape than Lance—but there was only so far they could push themselves. It was all fine and dandy that Allura had the endurance of a world-class triathlete, but they were coming to the point of having to stand and fight, find somewhere to hide, or get the hell off this planet.

For the hundredth time, he considered contacting Hunk and Pidge to see if they were coming, then decided his heart couldn’t take it if the answer was no. Besides, talking at all sounded like a tall order at the moment.

“Is it just me,” Matt said into the silence, “or is it getting quieter back there?”

Lance glanced over his shoulder. His headlamp didn’t reach far enough for him to see the monsters, though the shrieking, shuffling, and grunting all pointed to a check in the don’t-stop-running box. “It’s you,” Lance grunted.

“No, he’s right.” Allura hesitated at the next intersection, then took off running again. Lance thought maybe she was aiming for the hangar at the center of the building, though they didn’t exactly have the luxury of navigation at the moment. The maps showed only the overall shape of the building, not the hangar, and _certainly_ not the hallways. “There isn’t as much noise as there was before.”

“So?”

Allura exchanged a look with Matt. Lance didn’t like that look. It was a _should-we-really-tell-him_ sort of look, and it didn’t bode well for whatever was about to come out of their mouths.

Finally Matt turned to Lance with a painful-looking forced smile. “It could mean they’re slowing down. Maybe we lost one.”

_Yeah, and maybe this planet is made of marshmallows and chocolate sauce._

Allura seemed equally unimpressed with Matt’s attempt at positive thinking. “ _Or_ it could mean they’ve split up, which means we need to keep our eyes open for an am--”

A shadowy blur detached from the darkness around them, bony hands reaching for Allura’s head. She spun, dropping low, and grabbed the creature as it passed overhead. By the time Lance had summoned his bayard, Allura had thrown the thing against the wall, stunning it.

Lance scowled at her. “You just _had_ to jinx it, didn’t you?”

Allura’s retort was lost in the shrieking of the other monster from behind. Two pinpricks of red light streaked toward the paladins through the darkness, and Matt barely had time to summon his sword before the thing was on him. Lance drifted between his friends, trying not to get caught up in either fight while taking potshots at both monsters. It was becoming increasingly obvious that his rifle was not meant to be fired into close-quarters combat. (Then again, what guns were? The whole point of ranged weapons was to not get close to your enemy.)

The creatures had the paladins trapped between them, Matt and the red-eyed creature behind, Allura and the other blocking the way to the hangar.

Allura’s opponent moved with impossible speed, dodging her strikes and taking advantage of even the slightest vulnerabilities. The web of silvery threads embedded in its skin shimmered faintly, a ghostly glow that might have been a reflection of Allura’s headlamp. Lance could barely get a bead on the creature, and even when it knocked Allura aside, giving Lance a clear shot, it moved faster than he could aim, sliding effortlessly underneath his laser blasts and sprinting toward him.

Lance stumbled back, rifle wavering, his shots going wild. As the creature reached out for Lance, Allura arrived, spinning into a kick that sent the creature flying backwards away from the pair of them. Allura glanced quickly at Lance, who flashed her a smile and a thumbs-up.

He didn’t get to celebrate for long; there was a howl from behind, a softer, very _human_ cry of pain, and then Matt was tumbling toward them, his deactivated bayard spinning along behind him.

“Matt!” Lance yelled, sprinting to his side. He knelt beside Matt and opened fire on the creature. For the first time all day, he got lucky—one of his shots hit the creature in its cybernetic eye. It shrieked, recoiled, and clawed at its face.

Lance glanced down at Matt.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” Matt grabbed his bayard and pushed himself off the ground. “I wasn’t paying attention is all. I just—ahh!”

The instant Matt put pressure on his right leg, it buckled, and he fell against Lance, who reached out a hand to steady him. “Matt?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Matt grunted. He shoved away from Lance, wavered on his feet, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t worry about me.”

Lance would have argued, but there was still a Galra monster to worry about—still alive, still dangerous, and more pissed than ever. Lance chased it around the corridor with his rifle, failed to land a single hit, and backed toward Matt, who stood stone-still, his sword clenched in a white-knuckled fist. “Hey, Allura? We’ve got a slight problem over here.”

Silence.

Allura swore under her breath. “All right. I’m going to try something.”

Unease tickled the back of Lance’s mind. “What kind of something?”

“The kind of something you would think of,” Allura said, which failed spectacularly on the reassurance front. “Just… get ready to run, and keep an eye on Matt.”

“ _Matt_ is right here and can _hear you_ , you know.” There was an edge to Matt’s voice that didn’t come entirely from pain.

Lance fired another barrage at the creature, then grabbed Matt’s arm. “Good,” he said with a too-wide smile. “Then you know what to do.”

“Ready?” Allura said. Lance grunted his response, keeping his eyes on the creature whose eye he’d shot out. Behind him, Allura roared, and the second creature came flying down the hallway, landing hard on the ground behind the first. One red eye turned to track the new arrival, head cocked as though in confusion.

“ _Run!_ ” Allura roared.

Lance dismissed his bayard, yanked Matt’s arm over his shoulder, and took off running, supporting Matt as best he could. He passed Allura too quickly to take in more than her suddenly blue skin and the new hunch-backed shape of her armor.

Roars, grunts, and shrieking metal rose to a crescendo behind them, but Lance couldn’t worry about Allura now. Matt was doing his best to run, but he was limping, his breath coming in pained gasps, and he leaned more heavily on Lance with every passing minute.

After a few seconds, Allura caught up to them and pulled Matt’s other arm over her shoulders, face melting back into her usual form.

“I locked them in an empty room,” she said. “Not that I expect that to delay them long. Pidge, Hunk, where are you?”

“ _Working on it_ ,” Pidge said. “We’re not exactly dealing with kittens over here.”

Allura’s face was taut. “Just. Hurry.”

* * *

Pidge grimaced, muting the comms. “I guess it’s time to go,” they said, as much to themself as to Hunk, whose face looked oddly frigid in the blue light of his helmet. They’d sealed their helmets ten minutes ago and opened every gas valve as far as it would go. Hunk had managed to snap a few off entirely, but they weren’t flimsy, and neither of them wanted to risk a spark igniting the gas before they were ready.

There was no telling how much gas they’d released into the room, or how flammable it was. Pidge had briefly toyed with the idea of creating new suit sensors to test air quality, once they made it out of here, but it sat low on their list of priorities. The castle-ship already identified the chemical composition of planetary atmospheres, and really, how often were they going to be releasing unknown quantities of unknown gases into sealed chambers?

But, well, the others needed an extraction. Pidge was just going to have to go for it.

_I hope this works._

Pidge moved to the center of the room, facing the door, and braced themself as Hunk began to dismantle the barricade. When it was only the massive desk left, shuddering under the creature’s onslaught—slower now than it had been, but still backed by a terrifying amount of force—Hunk glanced at Pidge.

“You sure you want to do this?”

Pidge grimaced. “Just get out and get ready to blow this place.”

“Right...” Hunk sucked in a deep breath, the sound oddly hollow through the local comm channel. “Three…” Hunk lowered his shoulder against the desk and shoved it away from the door. “Two…” The door shuddered, and Hunk eyed it warily as he pressed his back against the wall, gripping the wires he’d dug out of the control panel and stripped. "One!”

Hunk touched the wires together and the door slid open. Pidge’s headlamp flashed off the creature’s mechanical arms—one mangled and hanging limp—as it faltered, momentarily confounded by the lack of barrier between it and its prey.

Pidge didn’t wait for it to recover.

They fired their bayard, aiming low. With a flick of their wrist, they lashed the hook around the creature’s leg and yanked, retracting the bayard at the same moment. The creature toppled and shot toward Pidge, clearing the door for Hunk. As he ducked through, Pidge charged forward and leaped over the creature, which sailed by under them, crashing into the lab bench at the back of the room.

Retracting their bayard, Pidge barreled through the door, shouting wordlessly at Hunk, who opened fire. The superheated laser discs ignited the gas, blooming yellow-orange as Pidge slapped at the external door controls.

The force of the explosion knocked them over backward even with the door closed, the door’s seams glowing a dull red. Through the ringing in their ears, Pidge thought they heard a low moaning—pained, subdued, and definitely not clawing through a solid inch of metal in the immediate future.

Hunk let out a surprised little laugh and helped Pidge up. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

“That gas must’ve been more combustible than I figured. Actually… we’re lucky we didn’t get incinerated.” Pidge caught the tail-end of Hunk’s _oh god_ face and quickly backtracked. “Uh, just kidding. I’m sure these doors are _way_ too thick to cave to one little explosion.” They rapped their knuckles on the door, then winced as the blistering hot metal singed their suit. “Let’s just... get back to Green.”

Hunk had never looked more relieved. The two of them jogged down the dark, quiet corridors, bayards at the ready, headlamps sweeping the way ahead. Pidge hoped they didn’t run into any trouble, with one monster burned to a crisp in a lab behind them and the other two busy trying to kill Matt and the others (and wasn’t _that_ just the happiest thought?) But they weren’t about to get complacent now.

When the bayard-cut hole in the wall finally came into view, Pidge breathed a small sigh of relief. Green waited just outside, her eyes lighting up amber as they approached. The translucent shield flickered out, and the lion crouched, opening her mouth to welcome Pidge and Hunk inside.

“Guys, we made it to the lion,” Pidge said on the open frequency as they settled in at the controls. Hunk gripped the back of their seat and leaned over toward the scanner. The scanners marked the others’ location near the center of the prison complex, but the map didn’t have enough resolution for Pidge to pinpoint them from the air. “Where are you?”

“We’re on our way to the hangar,” Allura said. “Hurry.”

“Copy that. Be there in a flash.” Pidge eased the Green Lion into the air, but she paused, shuddering, a deep sense of revulsion creeping through Pidge’s mind. “What the--”

A metal hand, covered in soot, appeared at the edge of the viewscreen, followed quickly by the rest of the creature. It’s rotting skin was now blackened and blistering, its mangled left hand melted into a misshapen lump. Hunk screamed, Pidge tensed, and Green roared in pain as the creature dug its claws into her hull.

 _You’re not ripping_ my _lion apart_ , Pidge thought. They punched the controls, shooting skyward and spinning a tight spiral. The creature clung to Green’s hull, back end whipping from side to side as Pidge tried to shake it off. They tucked into a steep dive, pulled up hard, and reversed direction. Behind them, Hunk moaned.

“If you’re going to be sick, you’d better get away from my chair.”

Hunk only whimpered in response.

It didn’t matter anyway. With one final tumble, Pidge shook the creature free. It fell toward the prison complex below. Pidge didn’t see where it landed; they were already leveling out their lion and searching for the hangar bay. They only hoped they weren’t too late.

* * *

Orgul gathered her officers on the bridge of the _Herald_. She glanced at each as they entered, but said nothing. Exchanging nervous looks, the officers gathered behind her, facing the viewscreen that showed them Yaltin below. Shiro kept close to Keith, unease building behind his breastbone. Something about this was wrong. For all Orgul stood with her arms loose at her side, head high and face impassive, she seemed… displeased.

Shiro glanced at Keith, who shrugged helplessly.

Luba and the other lieutenants joined Orgul by the viewscreen, each of them looking as anxious as the rest of the room. Evidently Orgul hadn’t shared any more details with them than with the rest of the army.

Another ship drifted through high orbit, this one much larger than the _Herald_. Shiro hadn’t made a study of Galra ships, but he figured whoever was on there had to be important. The only question was… if Zarkon had sent reinforcements, then why had Orgul pulled out?

It was Luba who finally voiced the question on everyone’s mind. “Commander, why did we withdraw? We had the locals backed into a corner. We were _winning_. What ever happened to _victory or death_?”

Orgul fixed her with a look as cold as the deepest corner of space. The lieutenants nearest Luba took a subtle but meaningful step away from her, and Luba shot them all scowls before inclining her head toward Orgul.

“...with all due respect, of course, Commander,” Luba ground out.

Orgul continued to stare at her, inscrutable, until Luba’s aggravation turned to wariness. Only then did Orgul return her gaze to the viewscreen and the planet below. “Emperor Zarkon gave the order for our withdrawal. Yaltin possesses no natural resources of any substantial value, and its only tactical value is as a buffer between the heart of Lord Zarkon’s empire and any outsiders who think to fight back.”

A ripple of whispers had skittered throughout the room at Orgul’s statement, but if she noticed, she didn’t show it. The _Herald_ was pulling back behind the other ship, which Shiro now saw had five large crystals protruding from the underbelly like the points of a compass around a central spire.

“Lord Zarkon decided not to waste more time on this fight,” Orgul said. A shadow of anger had crept into her voice; Shiro could only assume Zarkon’s exact words had been considerably more accusatory than Orgul let on. He hadn’t been in the Galra army long, but he could hardly fail to pick up on the air of do-or-die that permeated every activity. If Zarkon had taken a personal hand in this invasion, it meant Orgul had failed in her mission.

Shiro didn’t envy her.

Luba glanced at the other ship. “We aren’t abandoning the fight,” she said. “A Galra would never...”

A few other officers muttered their agreement, and Shiro looked around uneasily. Keith looked distracted, his ears folded back, his claws tapping restlessly against his armored leg.

Orgul barely moved—just a faint clink of armor as she firmed her stance, but it was enough to silence the unrest around her. “It would seem,” she said in an even voice, “that the witch Haggar has been working on a project of her own. Emperor Zarkon decided Yaltin would make an ideal trial.”

Keith’s hands fell still.

Shiro stared out the viewscreen in frozen anticipation. He wanted to leave, wanted to return to his quarters two decks down. He wished he’d never left the surface.

 _Haggar._ Whatever she had planned, it would be sick and sadistic. Shiro didn’t want to bear witness to the carnage. He couldn’t let himself run away. Whatever happened next, the blame lay at least in part on his shoulders. He’d inspired the Yaltians to rebellion. He’d stymied Orgul’s invasion.

He'd doomed Yaltin.

The crystals on the belly of the other ship began to glow with the violet light of Quintessence, a light that was all too familiar to Shiro by now. It was a sight he couldn’t associate with anything other than death and destruction. His breath eddied in his lungs, stagnating as Haggar prepared her experiment.

Purple lightning crackled between the crystals, a brewing storm that the Yaltians were powerless to stop. Shiro’s hands clenched into fists at his side, the fingernails on his human hand biting into his palm. The _otherness_ inside his Galra arm stirred, too, straining toward the surface like a spectator toward a show. Shiro told himself to look away.

Instead he watched, unblinking, as a bolt of violet lightning as big around as a small ship split the Yaltian atmosphere. It hit the surface and spread out in a dancing web across the planet, writhing like a living creature.

Orgul’s eyes narrowed. “Quintessential extraction,” she muttered. The answering intake of breath was audible, and Shiro glanced questioningly toward Keith, who had lost all pretense of disinterest. For just a moment, his horror was laid bare.

Seeing Shiro’s warning glare, he covered his reaction—though now that Shiro let himself look, he saw that Keith was not the only one to be affected by the revelation. Many looked shocked, even disturbed. A few looked on with savage interest, but far more looked sick to their stomach. Shiro felt his spirits plummet.

“What is it?” Shiro hissed in Keith’s ear. “Quintessential extraction—what does that mean?”

Keith licked his lips, his eyes riveted to the lightning still encircling Yaltin. “Haggar’s draining the planet’s life force. It—no one’s ever been able to do that before. We always needed the Balmera to concentrate Quintessence into crystals before we could harvest it. If Haggar’s experiment works, it won’t just win the battle for Yaltin… It will change the way we fight, the way we travel...” He looked at Shiro then, face carefully blank, eyes wild with something close to panic. “This could change _everything_.”

Outside, Haggar’s lightning faded. From so high, nothing seemed to have changed. Yaltin remained as it had been, whole and quiet, painted in rich tones. Luba gaped at the other ship for several long seconds before she turned and stalked toward the engineers manning the _Herald’s_ controls. They spoke in low, clipped tones, monitor flashing from one readout to the next.

Luba blinked, jaw slack. Then, slowly, a grin spread across her face. “She’s done it,” Luba whispered. Turning, she thrust a fist into the air. “Yaltin is dead.”

* * *

Allura took as much of Matt’s weight on herself as she could. Lance was strong for a human, but after running through the darkness, fighting, and being strangled by the Galra abominations, he was flagging. They all were. Matt had initially tried to wave off their help, insisting he was fine, his leg was fine, he could run under his own power.

He’d been unable to keep up the facade for long.

By now he was drooping, his right leg all but useless, his left struggling to keep him upright as Allura and Lance carried him toward the hangar. _Pidge and Hunk are coming_ , Allura told herself—not for the first time. _You aren’t trapped. Remain calm. Think. Move._

She checked her map and grimaced—they were closer now to where she thought she remembered the hangar being, but the corridors were as dark as ever, the light of their three headlamps scarcely enough to show them where they were going. They’d started to come across debris in their path—first only a few shattered ceiling tiles, then breaks in the floor where one metal panel had ridden up over its neighbor. The deeper they went, the more debris they encountered and the harder it was to maneuver over them, hampered as they were by Matt’s injury.

The creatures hadn’t been delayed long by the locked door, and even now Allura could hear them creeping up behind the three of them, rasping breath raising the hairs along Allura’s neck.

They weren’t going to make it.

Allura clenched her jaw and reached for her meager Quintessential reserves. They hadn’t fully recovered from healing the Balmera a week prior, and she’d already used too much mimicking the creatures’ form to hold them at bay while Lance helped Matt to safety. Really, she shouldn’t be considering another transformation.

But she had no other choice. Pidge was on their way, but the hangar was still some distance away. The creatures would overtake the paladins long before they arrived if Allura couldn’t find a way to pick up the pace.

So she grabbed hold of her Quintessence and willed herself to change.

Matt yelped as the arm supporting his right side suddenly rose a foot and a half higher into the air, thickening with new muscle. Allura stumbled once as her stride lengthened, then found her new rhythm. Galra bodies always had been awkward in the first few moments, their natural strength and speed a sharp increase from Allura’s own physique.

Lance and Matt were staring at her, and she struggled not to roll her eyes. “Yes, I know, I’m a Galra. You can gawk at me later.” She dropped her arm to Matt’s waist and tossed him over her shoulder, tactfully ignoring his undignified yelp. “Let’s move.”

She took off at a jog, Lance following close on her heels. Matt squirmed, pushing against her back to lift his head. “Wh-what are you doing?”

“Getting us to the hangar.” One of the creatures screamed as it rounded the corner behind them, and Allura broke into a sprint. “Hold on.”

Lance’s rifle sounded as they ran, but from his swearing none of his shots landed. That was fine. They were almost to the hangar. The airlock doors there would be sturdier than the ones in the interior of the prison. If they could only get there, they ought to be able to hold out until Pidge and Hunk arrived to extract them.

They sprinted around the corner, Lance yelling a battle cry, Matt’s fingers digging into the grooves of Allura’s armor in an attempt to steady himself. They were so close now. _So close_.

Allura’s headlamp vanished into a sudden darkness and she skidded to a stop, Lance slamming into her from behind.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Why’d we stop?”

Allura couldn’t speak. A vast, hemispherical hollow yawned before them, swallowing the far end of the corridor. Their headlamps passed over crumbling, dry dirt and a few bits of stone and metal, fallen from what remained of the building.

Matt gasped, going rigid in Allura’s grasp. She spun and spotted the two creatures at the last intersection. They paused for an instant, staring at her, breathing, waiting—for what?

Lance shifted beside her, fingers flexing on the barrel of his gun. He glanced at the pit behind them, the creatures beginning their slow prowl forward. (They knew the paladins were trapped. They knew they could take their time. Could they be… planning something?)

After another moment of hesitation, Lance huffed. “Screw this.” He pivoted and shoved Allura backwards into the pit, sending her and Matt and Lance himself down into the darkness. Allura struggled to keep her footing, but the slope was just too steep. She skidded, wobbled, and pitched forward, twisting her body to shield Matt as best she could.

They landed in a heap, Allura flat on her back, Matt rolling once more and stopping beside her, Lance landing heavily atop their legs. Matt bit his lip so hard Allura thought he might draw blood, but said nothing as he extracted his wounded leg from the knot of limbs.

Allura glanced up toward the lip of the crater. The creatures peered down at them, visible as faint pale blurs at the edge of the headlamp’s range. Allura scowled at Lance as they picked themselves up. “What was that for?”

Lance reached for his bayard, wincing. “Had to get away from them somehow, didn’t we?”

“But now we have to get back _up_ from here somehow.”

“ _Or_ we could just have Pidge come pick us up here,” Lance shot back. When Allura didn’t immediately retort, he smirked in an infuriatingly self-satisfied way. “Pidge, change of plans.”

While Lance caught Pidge up to speed, Allura stared up at the creatures. If they decided to come down here, things could go bad very quickly. Nowhere to run, no cover. Matt injured, Allura almost out of Quintessence—she still held her Galra form, but at best that would last her another two or three minutes in battle.

A sound—faint, but decidedly nonrandom—tickled her ear. She swiveled her head, focusing on that sound to the exclusion of all else, trying to locate its origin. It was a rhythmic tapping, accompanied by intermittent metallic scraping. If the prison complex had had power, she might have thought it was an air cycler, or perhaps a cleaning bot making its rounds.

Under the circumstances, however…

She turned toward the far side of the crater, squinting into the darkness. It was definitely coming from that direction, and Allura had a bad feeling she knew what was making it.

“Pidge, you’re going to want to hurry,” she whispered.

“Yeah, yeah,” Pidge grumbled. “I’m _coming_. Just give me a tick to get out of this freaking hangar, and I’ll--”

Whatever Pidge was about to say was lost in the trio of screams that suddenly split the silence. A pale figure, metal arms flashing in the light of Allura’s headlamp, emerged from the darkness blanketing the far side of the crater. A frantic glance behind show the other two creatures also descending into the hollow. They split apart, spreading out to encircle the paladins.

Allura dropped into a crouch, backing toward Matt and Lance, who both had their bayards out. Matt’s took on the form of a laser gun this time, and he held it out before him like a lifeline.

The creatures stopped equidistant from the paladins’ location and made no move to attack. Instead they raised their arms toward each other. The new arrival’s left arm was a melted, twisted mess, but that didn’t seem to hinder it. Tainted Quintessence gathered in their hands, crackling like purple lightning. The creatures’ eyes—for the two that still possessed biological eyes—began to glow a faint white like four tiny moons in the black of the crater.

“Pidge!” Allura roared.

“Two more ticks! I’m trying to pinpoint you on my scanners so I don’t crush you when I come in for a landing.”

Lightning leaped from one creature to the next, fiery branches burning green afterimages into Allura’s vision. The energy formed an equilateral triangle with the paladins at its center, and there was something black growing out from that line—deeper and darker than the darkness around them.

“Pidge, _now_!”

The hasty scaffolding around the crater collapsed, a gust of air filling the area and nearly blowing Allura off her feet. She widened her stance and latched onto Matt, who stumbled backward, raising his hands in a flimsy defense. There was shouting on the comms--

But all Allura could think of was the sudden reassuring rumble at her core.

“What the— _Blue_?” Lance laughed once, breathless and disbelieving. He gaped up at his lion, which—along with the Black and Red Lions—had appeared from the darkness, touching down in a tight circle around the paladins. “Did you just—how did—I _knew_ you were the best lion!”

A frigid undercurrent swept through the room, pitching the Black Lion’s voice toward alarm. Between the lions’ legs, Allura could see the darkness of the creatures’ magic spreading, rising up in a steep dome around them. The hole at the top was closing rapidly. Allura helped Matt find his balance, then pushed him toward the Red Lion.

“Everyone to your lions,” she ordered. “Pidge, fall back. We’re coming out.”

She waited just long enough to see that Matt and Lance had made it into their lions. Then she ducked into the Black Lion’s mouth and settled into her pilot’s chair. Darkness pressed in all around, so dense she couldn’t even make out the glow of the other lions’ eyes just a few paces away. In the deep corners of her mind, Allura felt Black’s panic surge, and together they strained upward toward the tiny pinprick of lesser darkness where the dome had not yet closed. The force of Black’s boosters pressed her backward into her seat.

Then the pinhole closed, and the world around her ceased to be.

* * *

Pidge watched in horror as the inky black sphere, crackling with violet electricity, sealed itself shut, the other three paladins sealed with in. For a moment, everything hung in stasis. Hunk clung to the back of Pidge’s seat. The alarms set off by Pidge’s hasty exit from the prison hangar faded to white noise. Their lungs paused between inhale and exhale, waiting for the Red Lion to burst through the shadowed dome, Black and Blue on her tail.

Instead, the dome flashed ghostly white, so bright Pidge had to raise an arm to shade their eyes. When it faded, the dome—along with the three lions and their paladins—had vanished, leaving behind a smaller, deeper crater inside the large one.

_No._

Pidge lunged forward, bringing up the scanners. It showed a faint cloud of bio energy, quickly dissipating, and three pinpricks directly below the Green Lion—the Galra monsters, still as statues at the corners of the triangle, now staring up at Green.

 _No_.

“Coran,” they said, voice shaking. _No, no._ “Coran, what—where are they? Can you see them? Coran?”

“I...” Coran’s voice faltered, and something inside Pidge shifted, a block of ice closing in around their chest. “I’m so sorry, Pidge, I can’t--”

_No. No, no, no, **no.**_

“Run it again.” Pidge’s hands clenched the controls in a white-knuckled grip, tremors making Green shiver in midair. It couldn’t be… _Matt_ couldn’t be…

“Pidge...”

They’d only just found Matt.

“ _Run the damn scans again, Coran!_ ”

Silence answered this outburst, but eventually Coran sighed. “All right.”

The seconds slipped by, Pidge’s heart racing them on to the inevitable outcome. _No. Please, no…_ Hunk laid a hand on Pidge’s shoulder, but Pidge twisted away from it. They turned, ready to yell at Hunk for giving up on them ( _how_ could he give up on them?)

The tears brimming in Hunk’s eyes stopped the words in Pidge’s throat. It suddenly occurred to them that it hadn’t just been Matt down there, but Lance and Allura, too.

“Scan complete,” Coran said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “There’s no sign of Allura, Lance, or Matt anywhere within range. The castle can’t detect their lions, either. They’re gone.”


	15. Those Who Are Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... At the end of Orgul's three day deadline, the Galra army on Yaltin pulled out, only for Haggar to show up with a new weapon and drain the planet of Quintessence. Meanwhile the Galra experiments on Vel-17 attacked the paladins, separating them as they chased them though the Galra prison. Matt, Lance, Allura, and their lions were consumed by a dark energy attack, leaving nothing but an empty crater behind.

The atmosphere on-board the castle-ship was stifling. Hunk sat at his station on the bridge with his elbows on his knees, darting quick glances toward Coran and Pidge, who hadn’t spoken since Vel-17 faded to a pinprick in the distance.

After the dark ripple of their attack had faded, the Galra experiments had stood in their new crater, staring up at the Green Lion, until Pidge had clamped down on their grief and started searching the planet. By their fifth pass over the prison complex, the creatures were nowhere to be seen—not that Hunk was disappointed to see them go. An hour had passed, then two, Pidge and Coran scanning for life. They’d deployed the full-scale BLIP-tech sensors, and Hunk had kept up a steady mantra on the comms, hoping against all odds that Lance, Matt, or Allura would hear him.

They hadn’t, even after they returned to the castle-ship and used its transmitter to boost their signal.

After the first four hours, Hunk felt himself lose what little hope remained. There were no signs of life on the surface beside the three creatures, no response on the comms. The only thing that remained of their friends was a crater in the ground.

One glance at Coran said he shared Hunk’s resignation, but he kept searching for Pidge’s sake for another hour, choosing not to argue when Pidge presented an escalating series of unlikely scenarios. Damaged comms, BLIP-tech-blocking energy fields, and glitchy Altean tech became time travel, teleportation, and a secret Galra bunker under Vel-17’s surface.

When Coran finally worked himself up to saying they had to move on, Pidge practically exploded at him.

 _They’re not dead!_ they’d shouted, voice breaking on the last word. Hunk had felt it like a laser blast to the gut, his eyes burning with unshed tears. Lance’s last, terrified shouts still rang in Hunk’s ears.

Even Coran was affected by Pidge’s outburst, though it didn’t stop him from turning the castle-ship around and heading back into deep space. _I’m sorry, Pidge,_ he’d said in a low voice. _We’ve run every scan we can. They’re gone._

Pidge had stared at their monitor, their helmet hiding their face from the other two. Their shoulders trembled, though, and Hunk could hear the sniffles they couldn’t quite suppress.

It had been twenty minutes since then, and the silence was slowly closing around Hunk’s lungs. The castle-ship, always vast and lonely, felt larger and emptier than ever. Hunk missed Allura’s calm, commanding presence at the helm. He missed Matt’s quiet smiles and the way he chewed at a hangnail when he thought. He missed Lance’s dumb jokes and boisterous laughter and the way he looped an arm around Hunk’s neck just because he felt like it.

He missed _Lance_.

“It could have been a wormhole.”

Pidge’s voice felt foreign in the heavy silence, and Coran’s shoulders tensed. Hunk glanced at him, then at the back of Pidge’s helmet. He wished they would look at each other. It felt wrong for them to be so distant, when they were all dealing with the same thing.

“You can’t tell me I’m wrong,” Pidge continued, voice bristling in preparation for an argument. “The wormhole that took us to the Balmera—the one that was all dark and creepy because of Sendak’s crystal? It looked different than the other ones we’ve used, which means they don’t always look the same, which means that dark sphere down there could have been one, which _means_ the others could still be alive. _Right?_ ”

Hunk swallowed, but didn’t trust himself to speak. He wanted Pidge to be right, wanted it so much it felt like tiny Galra monsters had opened up a wormhole inside of him. He just… couldn’t find it in him to hope for a happy ending right now.

_This is war. Why would the Galra make things to open wormholes when they could create a real weapon?_

After a long moment, Coran sighed, his shoulders slumping. He pressed a few buttons on his control panel, then turned toward Pidge, who continued to stare at their monitor—still showing the last scan of Vel-17.

“Even if you’re right, it doesn’t change anything,” Coran said. “It’s impossible to trace a wormhole once it’s closed. We have no way to know where they might have been taken, or what they found on the other side.”

“So we’re just gonna give up?” Pidge whirled, glaring daggers at Coran. “Screw that! We should look for them. We _have_ to look for them.”

Coran didn’t answer.

Hunk ran a hand through his hair. “It’s gotta be worth a shot,” he said, wishing he believed it. “What else are we gonna do, take on Zarkon with two lions and the castle?” Hunk laughed, grinding his knuckles against the inner corners of his eyes to keep the tears at bay. “We’d have to look for help anyway, or—or somewhere to hide? I don’t know. All I’m saying is, why can’t we look for the others a the same time?”

The teary, grateful smile Pidge shot him was reason enough to stand by his words, however hollow they sounded to his ears. Hiding was sounding like a very good option, except that he doubted there would be anywhere that was truly _safe_ for the soon-to-be-former Voltron paladins. Starving for a distraction from his bleak thoughts, Hunk turned to his monitor and fumbled his way through the menu. Pidge’s translator was still buggy, but it was a huge improvement over a wall of Altean text.

“See, here,” Hunk said, tapping the monitor to project his screen onto the central holographic display. A localized starmap appeared, the castle-ship at the center with markers for the Yellow and Green Lions. “We can set the castle to scan for their lions. It’ll alert us if it picks anything up, and we won’t even have to do anything.”

Pidge nodded and added another layer to the star map—blue icons for inhabited worlds, red for distress beacons. “We can ask around about those monsters down there, maybe find another research station and hack their system. If we can find out what the experiments were for, maybe we can figure out where those things sent Matt and the others.”

Hunk looked up in time to catch a flicker of sorrow on Coran’s face before he covered it up with a smile and a snap of his fingers. “Well, if we’re going to do all that, we’ll need to find someone selling teludavs--er, wormhole generators—or at least the motivators.”

“We will?” Hunk asked, trading glances with Pidge.

Coran was nose deep in the nav system, but he spared them a thumbs-up over his shoulder. “What, you think King Alfor wanted people flying his house all over the universe willy-nilly? The teludav tuned to the royal line. Allura always leaves the system prepped for an emergency departure, but that only gives us a single wormhole. Ha- _ha_!” He tapped his monitor triumphantly, and a blue marker near the castle-ship turned green on the holo-display. “Wa’resha,” he said. “It was a major trade planet in my day, and it’s still inhabited. More importantly, they haven’t issued a distress call. With luck, we’ll find what we need there and be on our way faster than a guffy in a windstorm.”

Pidge’s face brightened. “I take it that’s fast?”

Coran’s arched eyebrow was answer enough. “It’s going to take some time to get there, unfortunately. Don’t want to use our only wormhole if we can help it.”

“How long are we talking here?” Hunk asked warily.

“About a day. Don’t worry, though, I’ll keep an eye on things up here. You two go get some rest. I’m sure you’re both tired.”

Hunk knew Coran was right. He also knew from the way Pidge wrinkled their nose, that they weren’t thinking of sleep. “I’m gonna go work on some new mods for Green. Call me when we’re there.”

Hunk watched them go, then turned back to Coran, who had busied himself once more with the nav system. For a moment, Hunk wrestled with himself. Should he say something? Coran and Allura were practically family, and her disappearance—death? (no, he couldn’t think like that)—had obviously hit Coran hard.

But who was Hunk to go poking at Coran’s emotions? They’d only known each other for a couple weeks. He should go…

Hunk’s feet made the decision for him, carrying him toward Coran’s control station. He put a hand on Coran’s shoulder. “You doing okay?”

Coran flashed him a smile that was as brilliant as it was forced. “Swell,” he said. “No need to fret. I’ve weathered a disaster or two in my day.”

Hunk frowned. “Right… You think Pidge might be onto something with the whole wormhole thing?”

“I...” Coran hesitated, his chipper act faltering. “I hope they’re right. I do. I—she’s all I have left.”

Hunk’s chest tightened, and before Coran could cover up with another joke, Hunk pulled him into a crushing hug. “We’ll find them, Coran. If they’re out there, we’ll find them.”

Coran stilled for a moment, then quietly lifted a hand and patted Hunk’s back.

“I’m sure we will.”

* * *

Galra archives were highly biased sources.

This was not, of course, new information to Keith, who had spent the better part of the last three years shut up in a computer bay to avoid the more stomach-turning aspects of command. He hadn’t had to visit any of the planets he studied to know the records painted them in a condescending light. Common sense said the Galra couldn’t have developed every technology of note, and Keith had seen for himself prisoners with greater physical or mental capacity than their captors.

It only made sense that the information on worlds beyond the Empire’s borders would be even more biased. Military intelligence was one thing—still often downplayed, especially where the Galra held an overwhelming advantage, but not completely ignored—but culture, architecture, academia? Keith had always assumed such analysis was at least a slight underestimate.

So he was shocked, and ashamed, to realize that the people of Berlou still had the ability to surprise him.

The records called them a primitive people at the dawn of their planet’s digital age. They had received visitors from other worlds who had provided them moderately impressive defenses, but barely understood how to use it. Their tacticians were simpletons, their civic leaders petty and inefficient, their people weak-willed and easily frightened.

Translated to an unbiased perspective, Keith figured the Berlua were a clever enough people—unused to combat but organized enough to mount some resistance to invasion. The _Herald,_ after all, was not the first Galra warship to reach Berlou. The _Standard_ had been stationed here for three months without a decisive victory. _Three months._ Why fight for three months here and only allow Orgul a few weeks on Yaltin? The question nagged at Keith and left him feeling antsy. How much longer would Zarkon let this battle rage before he sent Haggar in? Shiro couldn’t take a repeat of their last attempted coup.

But what Keith saw when he stepped out onto the surface of Berlou was much closer to equal footing than he’d anticipated. Both warships were stationed outside a large city called Faus, where the resistance was strongest.

The city didn’t look like it was struggling for survival.

A large energy dome covered the city, glowing faintly green in the evening light. Several smaller domes dotted the city within the main shield, and speeders patrolled the perimeter. Keith counted four large laser canons on the wall facing the ships.

It wasn’t just that the city was well defended, either. The _Standard_ had dug in, surrounded by dropships and bombers undergoing repairs. Ruined fighters littered the scorched earth around Faus, where salvage crews guarded by tight knots of sentries poked through the wreckage. The mood in the Galra encampment was one of tension, with the sharp stench of fear.

It shouldn’t have surprised Keith, the thought that someone could put up a serious fight against Galra forces. But it did. Maybe the imperialistic Galra arrogance had a stronger hold on him than he’d thought.

He tried not to focus on his discomfort. Orgul and her officers had gathered with Commander Dusan of the _Standard_ to be brought up to speed on the invasion. Mostly this involved empty bragging about Galra superiority and the cowardice of the Berlua, who hid inside their shields rather than stand and fight. Dusan did mention an organized resistance that sometimes raided the Galra camp—and even if he only brought it up to dismiss it as a threat, Keith and Shiro’s eyes locked. They’d found their in.

It wasn’t long before Luba voiced the one question Keith actually cared to hear the answer to:

“I assume you know what happened on Yaltin?” she said, arms crossed, glaring at a map of troop locations Dusan had called up on the holo-display. When Dusan nodded, she continued. “I don’t mean to complain—I’m as happy as anyone to cut down a few jumped-up savages—but why waste time hammering at their shields when Haggar can just...” She swiped her hand through the hologram, which dissolved at her touch.

Dusan looked unimpressed. He fixed Orgul with a look Keith couldn’t quite parse—a smirk and a lifted chin that made Orgul’s lip curl. He recognized the language of princely politicking, though, even if he couldn’t say what, precisely, had Dusan so pleased. “There’s some kind of fungus here Haggar wants for her biotech augmentations. I’m no druid, but from what I gather it’s rare, it’s valuable, and Haggar’s weapon would destroy every last strand of it.”

Keith smiled along with the other officers aside from Orgul, whose foul mood hadn’t cleared since leaving Yaltin. Keith knew the other Galra were only excited at the prospect of battle without the threat of Haggar’s superweapon hanging over their head. Galra liked to savor their kills.

Keith was smiling for another reason, and a glance at Shiro showed the same glimmer of optimism. Berlou was not Yaltin. These people were well-prepared and had an organized resistance. They’d held out for three months already and scored several victories of their own. Most importantly, the most daunting threat was—well. Not off the table entirely, not so soon after Yaltin, but at least held at bay.

 _This time,_ Keith thought, _will be different._

* * *

Matt’s head felt like someone had dropped a lion on it.

He didn’t know where he was, except that it was somewhere dark, cold, and eerily silent. There was a faint blue glow coming from...somewhere?...everywhere? It wasn’t enough to reveal more than dim, fuzzy shapes. He smelled smoke.

He was slumped in a chair, held upright by thick fabric straps, like--

_Red._

Matt lurched upright, gasped, and quickly revised his initial assessment. His head didn’t hurt; _everything_ hurt. His ribs, his back, his joints. He wondered if someone had come into Red’s cockpit while he was knocked out and gone to town with a sledge hammer. There was a particularly bright spot of pain under his collarbone that twinged when he tried to raise his right arm. He might have broken something in the crash.

Had they crashed? He didn’t remember taking off. They’d been surrounded, the Galra monsters charging up some kind of attack, Lance and Allura supporting his weight. Their lions had come, they’d all run for the cockpits, and then…

Nothing.

Grimacing against the pain, Matt unbuckled his harness. When he stood, his bad leg protested, but it held his weight.

“Red?” Matt’s voice rasped, another reminder that something was burning somewhere. Or maybe just smoking—the cockpit was still dark except for a strip of emergency lighting that marked the exit ramp. “Red, you still with me?”

A faint tickle at the back of his mind eased some of his tension, though he didn’t like how weak Red’s presence was. Had she been damaged by that attack? Matt suddenly wished he’d spent more time working on the lions with Hunk and Pidge. He’d learned the basics, and he could probably figure out more, but it would take time. If they were still on Vel-17, time was one thing he couldn’t afford.

First thing to do was get outside and assess the situation. _And hope those monsters aren’t still around._ He limped to the top of the ramp and summoned his bayard. Fortunately, it took its pistol form right away. Between his pounding headache and the fatigue seeping into his bones, he didn’t know if he’d be able to force his bayard into a shape it didn’t want to take, and his leg throbbed in protest at the thought of close-quarters combat.

He took a deep breath and hit the manual release.

Sunlight streamed in through the opening, stinging Matt’s eyes. Wispy white smoke drifted around him in lazy eddies. He heard no screams from outside, no motion of any kind—though if it was light out, it must have been hours after the creatures’ attack. Steeling himself, he crept down the ramp, bayard at the ready.

The sight that greeted him at the bottom of the ramp was a bleak, unfamiliar landscape. Bleached white sand surrounded him in windswept drifts, untouched by plant life of any kind. The remnants of a city rose in the distance, its buildings reduced to rubble and a few misshapen walls.

The Red Lion lay mostly upright on a pile of rubble—dark gray stone, pitted metal, plaster tiles. She didn’t look damaged, only dusted with sand. If anything, she looked as regal and placid as the Sphinx, if the Sphinx had been built by super-advanced aliens. Matt smiled at the thought and wondered what Pidge would make of the comparison.

The Black and Blue Lions sat atop the rubble beside Red. Black stood fully upright, her eyes flickering faintly, her mouth sealed shut. Blue lay on her side, smoking, as dark as Red. Her mouth was partially open, wedged against the rubble, and Lance was in the middle of shimmying out between her teeth.

Matt glanced around for signs of a threat, found none, and headed toward Lance, who hit the ground and moaned as Matt approached.

“You okay?” Matt asked. He reached down to help Lance up, only to remember the pain in his shoulder as Lance’s weight aggravated it. He winced, nearly dropping the younger paladin.

Lance stared at him with wide eyes. “Are _you_ okay?”

“Little sore from...whatever that was.” Matt forced a smile for Lance’s sake and gestured at their surroundings. “We’re not on Vel-17 anymore.” Lance glanced around, shock stealing across his face as he took it all in—terrain more rugged than the featureless plain around the Vellian prison, buildings that looked more like adobe than Galra steel. The only thing in sight that looked at all Galra in origin was the rubble beneath them, and that was half-buried in sand. Not exactly ancient ruins, but not as fresh as their lions.

A rumble drew their attention to the Black Lion, whose eyes were now glowing a steady yellow. She crouched down, opening her mouth to allow Allura to exit.

“Well at least one of them is working,” Lance muttered, and Matt spared him a pat on the back before he started toward Allura. Like Lance, she looked no worse for the wear. A few locks of hair had worked their way free of her bun, but she moved easily and smiled encouragingly at the others. Matt tried not to let on how sore he was. What had that attack _done_ to him?

Allura’s smile faded as she glanced around. As Matt reached her, Lance at his side, Allura knelt and placed a hand on the bare sand where it showed through the rubble.

“What’s wrong?” Matt asked.

“This isn’t Vel-17,” she said, unmoving.

Lance fidgeted, summoning and dismissing his bayard a few times. “Matt said the same thing.” He sounded dubious, and flushed when Matt shot him a questioning look. “I’m just saying it looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland out here. Are we _sure_ we didn’t get frozen in ice for a few thousand…” He trailed off at a sour look from Allura. “Right. Sorry.”

Matt sighed. He watched Allura stand and go to check on the Red Lion. “Something else is bothering you.”

She stopped, one hand resting on Red’s foreleg. “I don’t know what those creatures did, exactly. Some kind of wormhole, perhaps.” She shook her head. “Whatever it did, it appears to have drained our lions’ Quintessence.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Lance said.

“It’s not.” Allura crossed to the Blue Lion and stroked her snout. She sighed. “I never thought this would be an issue. The lions were designed to absorb Quintessence from their surroundings, the way living creatures do. Only… this planet is dead, just as Vel-17 was. The lions won’t be able to recharge while we’re here.”

“So, what? We’re stranded?” Lance swallowed, wrapping his arms around himself. “You’ve gotta be joking.”

“I’m afraid not. The lions have emergency fuel cells, of course, in case they were separated from the castle in deep space, but that system was designed to activate well before Quintessence ran out so that the reserves could support the pilot and maintain the mental link.”

Unease wormed its icy way through Matt’s veins. “So the lions are functional, but we can’t pilot them.”

“Essentially, yes.” Allura rubbed her temples. “I was able to transfer enough of my own Quintessence to the Black Lion to wake her up. I disabled the life support systems, so that charge should be enough to get us to a nearby system where the lions can regenerate. Unfortunately, my reserves are still low. I can’t wake your lions, not until I’ve had time to rest on a living planet.”

“Woah, woah, _woah_.” Lance waved his hands in front of Allura’s face. “Hold on. I’m not leaving Blue here all by herself!”

Allura closed her eyes momentarily. “We don’t have a choice.”

“There’s no way for us to share our Quintessence with the lions?” Matt asked.

Allura hesitated. “I suppose... _technicall_ _y_...it is possible. But you would have to be trained to control the flow of Quintessence, and even then, if humans don’t have excess reserves like Alteans do, trying to wake the lions could kill you.”

"I say we try it,” Lance said, raising a fist.

Allura fixed Lance with a quelling look, then turned to Matt. “If we stay here long enough for me to train you to control Quintessence—assuming you can learn—we’ll all die of Quintessential deprivation. Our only choice is to take the Black Lion somewhere she—and _I—_ can rest. A few days and we’ll have stored up enough Quintessence to jump start the Red and Blue Lions. We’ll just have to hope the Galra aren’t watching this place.”

Lance remained stubborn. “Then you go and rest. We’ll stay here to protect the lions and wait for you to come back.”

“Were you not listening, Lance? You’ll die of Quintessential deprivation before I get back.”

“Well, then you’d better hurry.”

Matt stepped forward, halting Lance’s tirade. “Let’s all calm down here. We need to scout the area anyway, make sure the Galra don’t have a base nearby. You two go check it out; I’ll stay here and see if I can coax a little juice out of our lions.”

Allura scowled for just a moment before relenting. “Very well. But Lance stays here. I don’t want you on your own if someone does show up. And if the planet is abandoned and you can’t make the lions work, then we leave.”

“Fair enough,” Matt said, overriding Lance before he could form an argument. “Stay safe out there.”

“You as well.”

In moments, Allura and the Black Lion were gone, skimming low over the ground toward the city in the distance. Matt watched her go, then waved Lance over to the Red Lion. He opened a hatch in Red’s flank and crawled into the maintenance space, where the power grid was.

Matt showed Lance the row of crystals that regulated power to the lion’s various systems. The last time Matt had been in here, they’d each glowed with cheery blue light; now they were as dull and dark as ordinary quartz.

“Go to Blue and make sure none of these crystals got knocked out of alignment,” Matt said. It was the first lesson Coran had taught Hunk, and the first Hunk had passed on to Matt and Pidge. Poorly aligned crystals made for an incomplete circuit. If the lions lost power to any of their systems, misaligned crystals were the most likely problem—and the easiest to fix.

Lance squinted at the panel, then nodded and backed out of the access hatch. When he had gone, Matt went back to work, checking the alignment of each crystal in turn before running over the handful of diagnostics and maintenance checks Hunk and Coran had taught him.

It didn’t make a difference. Red was in perfect working order, except that she had no power. The reserve power cell indicators glowed steady blue, but the command systems remained dead.

Matt lost track of how long he spent in the engine compartment—an hour? Two? He checked connections, cleaned dirt and grease from the machinery, felt along the pipes and conduits for leaks. Nothing. Allura had been right after all. Eventually, he heard a familiar whine of engines signaling Allura’s return and made his way back toward the exit.

He paused halfway there, a faint, unsteady light catching his attention. It was one of the crystals, flickering like a candle flame on a short wick. Breathless, Matt reached out toward the crystal. The glow steadied as his fingers approached, then spread to the neighboring crystal, then the one next to that. In the space of two heartbeats, the whole line was glowing, and remained glowing even after Matt pulled back his hand.

“Lance! What are you doing up there?”

Allura’s voice startled Matt out of his stupor, and he dragged himself out of the cramped space. Outside he found Allura, hands on her hips, standing beside the Blue Lion. Lance lay on Blue’s head, hands folded on his chest, eyes closed. He twisted his head and cracked an eye to look at Matt as he emerged.

“Hey, Matt, my man, do me a favor and tell Allura how important it is for humans to get some sunlight now and again?”

Matt blinked at him. “What? No, wait, never mind. Get down here and see if your lion’s working.”

Lance groaned. “Oh, come _on_.” He rolled over and dropped to the ground, flaring the jets on his back to soften the landing. “Look, I did what you told me to and nothing happened. Can’t we just send Allura off and--”

“I think Red borrowed some of my Quintessence.”

Matt’s words shocked Lance into silence. Even Allura seemed dumbfounded.

Heat rose in Matt’s cheeks, but he forced himself to explain about the crystals lighting up. “You were right—I don’t know how to give my Quintessence away, but I _am_ connected to Red. What if that let her share some of my energy? What if Blue could do the same with Lance?”

“I...” Allura frowned, but Matt was already heading for the cockpit. “That’s not how the lions were designed.”

“You said they absorb Quintessence from their surroundings.”

"From planets,” Allura said. “From _crystals_. Not from people! Do you realize how dangerous that would be?”

Matt shrugged as he dropped into his pilot’s seat. Lance had followed Matt and Allura inside and now stood staring at Matt as he reached for the controls. “I don’t think they can absorb from ordinary people. Or… they _won’t_. But in an emergency, from someone who’s bonded to her?” He shrugged. “You said you never expected the lions to run out of Quintessence. Maybe they just never had to do something like this before.”

He flashed a smile over his shoulders and reached out toward Red’s presence in his mind. _Come on, girl. Take as much as you need._ There was a low purr, then a rumble in his chest. Suddenly the dashboard flashed on, and the cockpit shifted as Red climbed to her feet.

Matt whooped as Allura and Lance steadied themselves against the walls. He turned toward them, smirking.

“What’d I tell you?”

Lance broke into a grin and sprinted for the ramp, dropping to the ground before Matt could lower Red’s head. He watched, smiling, as Lance sprinted toward Blue and slithered into the cockpit.

Allura remained at his shoulder. Matt turned toward her, wondering if he should say something. She seemed troubled by the lions’ behavior, though Matt couldn’t see why. They weren’t stranded, they didn’t have to leave two of their lions behind. Wasn’t that a good thing?

After a moment, Matt cleared his throat. “I, uh, should have asked. Did you find anything out there? Any sign of the Galra?”

“Nothing,” Allura said. She smoothed over whatever unease she may have been feeling and gave Matt a grim smile. “Just skeletons—a lot of them. This planet must have died suddenly a few years ago. The people had spaceports, but it seems not everyone was able to escape. Those who remained died a torturous death, but I didn’t see any signs of violence. Just decay. I don’t think the Galra were involved.”

Matt was silent, staring out the viewscreen as the Blue Lion came to life and let out a roar that rattled Matt’s teeth. He chuckled as Lance hailed him on the comms and whooped in triumph.

“Let’s get off this creepy-ass planet already,” Lance said.

Matt couldn’t agree more. Allura made her way back to the Black Lion in pensive silence, and the three of them headed for the sky.

* * *

A little more than twenty Earth hours later, according to Pidge’s laptop clock, the castle-ship entered the Wataia system. Pidge stayed where they were: curled up in Green’s pilot chair, laptop hooked up to the dashboard, staring at the code that was supposed to help Green process signals from a new set of sensors Pidge had installed. It was slow, frustrating work, and the program kept crashing when Green’s Altean programming kicked in, but it kept their mind busy.

Matt was alive. Pidge couldn’t let themself think differently. They couldn’t let themself _think_ , because every time they started, the evidence piled up against them.

Eventually Coran had the castle-ship parked on the dark side of Wa’resha’s moon. Pidge had assumed they’d be taking the lions down like they always did, but Coran insisted on one of the small cargo shuttles—short-range ships with a large hold and just enough room in the cockpit for three people.

“We need to be careful,” Coran explained, settling in at the controls. “We’re flying at half strength, and until we overhaul the wormhole generator, our mobility is severely limited. We don’t want to attract any more attention than we can help.”

Coran’s point was utterly reasonable, and Pidge hated it. It was just one more reminder of the three missing paladins. _Missing,_ not dead. Pidge’s throat felt tight, and they fidgeted with their harness as Coran piloted the shuttle toward the planet’s surface. Rover bobbed near Pidge’s head, a comforting presence as the universe went to shit.

Vibrant green forest and spire-like mountains covered much of Wa’resha’s surface, but Coran took them to a large city full of towering buildings that flashed in the sunlight and a network of slender bridges that looked like they shouldn’t have held their own weight. The whole thing was shaded by sheets of sprawling ivy and what looked like maroon ferns the size of yachts growing from the tops of buildings. It made the city look like a stand of palm trees, or maybe a Dr. Seuss book.

They landed in a public airfield on the north side of the city and headed toward the loudest voices. They passed beings of all kinds, from short reptilian creatures to gray-skinned giants with no discernible faces, but there was a notable lack of Galra soldiers, sentries, and drones. Wa’resha was well within the borders of Zarkon’s empire, yet he seemed to have no foothold here. Pidge would have been suspicious if they weren’t so confused.

Thanks to some helpful strangers, Coran, Pidge, Hunk, and Rover found their way to a cluster of towers connected by so many footbridges and open-air elevators running along glowing energy cables that the structure gave off the impression of a giant spiderweb.

The complex comprised a single massive marketplace. Large stores took up whole floors in the towers, food vendors sold wraps and nuts and grilled meat from carts parked along the bridges, and people wearing bangles that rang like bells wandered the crowd selling what Pidge could only assume were souvenirs. They bought one while Coran’s back was turned, transferring a handful of GAC from the device Coran had called a cronark and Pidge mostly thought of as a money-stick.

The toy was probably overpriced, but Pidge didn’t care. They had thousands of credits left over from their last stop, plus a literal castle full of apparently rare and valuable Altean doodads. No one was gonna miss the alien equivalent of pocket change. Besides, the toy was good for stimming. It was a little set of interlocking metal shapes that reminded Pidge of puzzles they’d seen on Earth where you were supposed to try to separate the pieces, except that Pidge was pretty sure this one actually rearranged itself as they fiddled.

Whatever. It kept their hands occupied and their brain just this side of overload.

And what a place this was for overstimulation. Thousands of voices speaking dozens of languages—each of them hitting the castle-ship’s translator matrix and trying to contort itself into English. A hundred different smells, from fresh fruit to charred meat to sun-baked leather to something like wet dog to god only knew what. Light flashed off windows and walkways and jewelry and emanated from neon-bright displays that blinked in a silent competition with the rest of this place to see who could trigger the most migraines. People pressed in on all sides, hot and sweaty and smelly and overall far too _present_ for Pidge to move with any degree of comfort.

They shrank against Hunk’s side and wished this would all be over soon.

The ship part store ended up being on the very top floor of the largest tower, because of _course_ it was. Coran had met a generous alien who volunteered to show them the way. The lithe, leathery-skinned man was half-naked, which made the elevator ride even more uncomfortable than it already was. It didn’t help that most people in the market wore similarly little clothing. Lance, Pidge couldn’t help thinking, would have loved this place.

The marketplace was so busy they couldn’t go more than two floors before the elevator stopped to eject passengers or welcome new ones, which meant it was a ten minute wait to get to the top floor. Ten painful, awkward minutes trying not to look at their guide and hoping they didn’t come off as rude. Pidge fidgeted with their new toy and glued their eyes to Rover as he darted around overhead. At least _his_ lights weren’t an assault on the eye.

Coran, of course, seemed unfazed by the (lack of) clothing around them and took the opportunity to find out more about Wa’resha.

“Thriving trade you’ve got here,” he said, smoothing his mustache.

“We have good trade routes this way.” The alien man’s voice rattled in a way that reminded Pidge of Yahtzee and made it hard to focus on his words. “Many travelers.”

“But not too many Galra, eh? Must be nice.”

The man shifted, voice clattering deep in his...chest? Were his vocal cords really that low? Did he even _have_ vocal cords? Pidge’s dad would have had a theory or two, if he were here. He’d always called himself an amateur cryptozoologist—said cryptids were what had drawn him to astrobiology in the first place, even if he did end up mostly working with bacteria.

The sudden sense of isolation took Pidge off guard, breathlessness and vertigo swooping down on them like they’d been shot out into open space without a tether. Millions of light-years of nothingness pressed in on all sides. Mom was back on Earth, on the other side of the Galra army. Dad was just as far out of reach the other direction, lost somewhere inside Zarkon’s prisons. And Matt was…

“We have… a deal with the Empire,” their guide said. Pidge barely heard him. “We make no trouble, they pay no tax, Zarkon stays away.”

“That’s very, ah, generous of Emperor Zarkon,” Coran said. He seemed to be watching his tone, feeling out their guide’s opinion of the agreement—or maybe just wary of the two dozen other aliens with them on the elevator platform. Just because the Galra army stayed away didn’t mean Zarkon didn’t have spies on Wa’resha.

The man only hummed. (It sounded like a chainsaw, and Pidge gave an involuntary, short-lived smile.) Before Coran could ask another question, they reached the top floor, and the passengers filed out onto the narrow walkway. They were hundreds of feet in the air by now, and the walkway had no railings—though Pidge did notice a distortion in the air to either side that might have been some kind of anti-gravity field or containment bubble. Hunk took one look over the edge and turned green. He stood up straight and rigid as a log and all but sprinted to the relative safety of the nearest tower.

Coran and the guide followed, but Pidge’s steps dragged. Rover seemed to notice their mood and drifted closer, chirping until Pidge reached out and rested a hand on his cool metal shell. It wasn’t that they hadn’t noticed how far from home they were. That was basically impossible when you were flying sentient robot lions, fighting purple aliens, and living in a high-tech spaceship/castle. It just hadn’t ever felt so… permanent.

Were things ever going to go back to normal?

“Come along, now, Pidge. Wouldn’t want you to get lost up here, hmm?”

Pidge looked up at Coran, then glanced away, scanning the balcony outside the store they were heading toward. There was a juice bar here, and scattered tables with a nice view of the mountains. Best of all, it lacked the crowds that overran the rest of the market. “I’m actually gonna sit out here if you don’t mind.”

Coran slowed, frowning. “Everything all right?”

Smiling was an effort, but Pidge managed. “A little tired’s all. I think I’m gonna get some juice. I won’t wander off, promise.”

“Well… if you’re sure.”

“Don’t worry about me. Go find that motivator.” They headed for the juice bar, ignoring the burning sensation on the back of their neck as Coran watched them for another ten seconds. Eventually he retreated, concern radiating off him in droves.

The first question bubbled up out of them while they were waiting at the counter for their drink, a trio of aliens beside them doing the same. “Hey, sorry to bother you, but I got separated from my friends the other day. You haven’t seen two humans—like me, but taller—and an Altean around...have you?”

It was a long-shot, Pidge knew, and probably stupid. If anyone here _was_ a Galra spy, they were sure to report back about someone looking for an Altean. There were only two of those left, after all, and both of them could be traced back to Voltron. Just by asking about Allura, Pidge was painting a target on their back.

By the same logic, though, if anyone _had_ seen an Altean—with or without humans—it was a safe bet that it was Allura. They had to take the chance.

The people waiting for their juice gave Pidge confused looks and slowly shook their heads. As their drinks came out, they grabbed them and ran, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. Pidge couldn’t blame them. They would feel the same under any other circumstances.

Still, they asked the next batch of customers to join them by the counter, and when the worker handed Pidge their juice, they headed for the seating area and tried again with the four-armed employee wiping down tables.

“Don’t you know anything?” asked a voice from the table behind Pidge. “Alteans are extinct.” They turned and found a small, vaguely reptilian alien staring at them over a glass filled with neon orange juice. The alien couldn’t have been any taller than Pidge. Their body, or at least what was visible under a thin, draped dress, was covered in downlike blue-green feathers. Their face—beak like a snapping turtle and small, dark eyes shaded by scaly brows—was framed by larger cream-colored feathers.

Pidge had probably been staring too long already, but the alien just clicked their tongue and smiled. “Jeya.” They extended a three-clawed hand. “Independent contractor.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow, but shook Jeya’s hand anyway, trying to figure out the proper response to that kind of introduction. “What sort of...contractor?”

“Ignore her.” The employee wiping tables snapped the dirty rag, spraying crumbs everywhere and giving Pidge an apologetic shrug. “She’s just a jumped-up pilot trying to make a name for herself.”

“Excuse _you_ ,” Jeya clicked her tongue again, pouting at the employee. “I’m trying to make a sale pitch here, Urra.” She turned back to Pidge, all charm once more. “So, kid, how much would you pay someone to track down an Altean for you?”

“Kid?” Urra laughed, a deep-throated sound that rang in the rafters. “Jeya, you’re fourteen standard. This one’s probably older than you. And what’ve I told you about taking impossible jobs? You demand payment up front, then back out and say it was all an Altean hunt—literally this time, I think.”

Pidge couldn’t help being amused at the interaction. They leaned their cheek on a fist and sipped their juice—something called sweetened purrop, which tasted a little like peaches. “I take it you two are friends?”

“Not after this,” Jeya grumbled, crossing her slender arms over her chest. Her eyes drifted toward Rover, who flew lazy circles over the table in an impromptu patrol. Pidge liked to think he was looking out for them. He reminded them of Matt in that regard—unpredictable, overprotective, and always hovering over Pidge’s shoulder.

Urra just laughed again. “Just watch your purse, visitor. My young friend has all the makings of an entrepreneur.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “Entrepreneur? Must be Resha for thief.” Jeya’s squawk of indignation made Pidge snort into their juice, and they smiled up at Urra. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“You do.” Urra glanced at the counter, cringed, and wrapped the dirty cloth around one hand. “I need to get back to work.”

Pidge waved as Urra departed, then turned back to Jeya, who was still sulking at her table, pointedly ignoring Pidge. “Hey, Jeya?” they asked. Jeya looked up warily. “What _do_ you know about hunting Alteans?”

* * *

There was a brief power struggle between the two Galra princes as Orgul’s army was integrated into the invasion, but by the end of the first day they’d reached an uneasy truce. Dusan, who knew the enemy better, maintained command over the invasion at large. Orgul retained control of her own troops within the bounds of Dusan’s plan. Dusan mostly had her carrying out brute-force attacks on Faus’s defenses.

Keith thought the mission was a perfect fit for Orgul’s army—violent and brainless. But Orgul was livid. He supposed she didn’t like being handed the gruntwork so soon after Haggar had usurped the invasion of Yaltin.

Fortunately Keith, a Galra prince himself (even if the validity of that rank was questionable at this point), had the right to demand a position with Dusan’s army, rooting out rebel saboteurs. It would have been worth it just to see the look of betrayal on Orgul’s face. He didn’t waste time smoothing her ruffled feathers. If she thought the transfer was just an effort to salvage his reputation, so much the better. They couldn’t afford to raise suspicions.

Then again, would it be so terrible if they were forced out of the Galra army? Keith had yet to say anything; he knew exactly how well Shiro would take the suggestion, and for once Keith was in no mood for a fight. Even so, the constant posturing was taking a toll on Shiro. It was taking a toll on _Keith_. Escaping that, joining the Berlua resistance… it might be nice.

First, though, they had to _find_ the resistance, and that was proving more difficult than Keith had expected. The saboteurs were good at what they did, sneaking in and out and leaving no trace but another wrecked ship in their wake. Three days passed without any direct confrontations. Their squad, headed by Captain Roan, was just about to turn back on the third night when they spotted them: four shadows in a ditch, so still they were hardly visible. Roan signaled for his squad to halt, and Keith shot Shiro a glance. They hadn’t exactly planned out their first meeting with the rebels, considering they couldn’t know where it would happen, or under what circumstances. Now that they were here, though, Keith knew what to do. It was dark, most of the army had already withdrawn, and they were well outside the perimeter of the ground base. Keith just hoped Shiro was thinking along the same lines.

Roan’s squad fanned out silently, surrounding the rebels, who were too focused on the Galra camp to notice the ambush. Keith drew his sword and fell into step behind Roan. One of the rebels turned, froze, then shouted an alarm and opened fire on the nearest Galra soldier. Roan raised his rife.

Keith ran him through before he had a chance to fire.

The two closest Galra stared at him in horror while the others traded laser blasts with the rebels. Smirking, Keith charged the Galra on his left. He ducked a poorly-aimed laser, then cut down his opponent and turned, expecting a sneak attack. Instead he found Shiro standing over the other’s body. He glared at Keith, but there was no time for discussion. Keith brushed past Shiro and fell on the three remaining Galra, sword flashing.

It was over in seconds. The rebels watched Shiro and Keith, wary. They hadn’t lowered their guns, but they weren’t shooting, either. Keith would take that. He deactivated his sword and raised his hands over his head.

“Don’t worry,” he said with his best disarming smile. “We’re here to help.”

* * *

Allura had always been aware that the Voltron Lions were not meant to stray far from the castle. For an isolated battle or a rescue mission, certainly. Her father had opened wormholes from the castle-ship during the war, but always with the understanding that he would also open the way for the lions to return.

The lions themselves weren’t capable of creating wormholes, with the notable exception of the emergency protocol Alfor had imbued them with when he disbanded Voltron ten thousand years ago. Coran had found the record outlining the process in the archives while cleaning up the residual corruption from Sendak’s crystal. It was short, pragmatic, and straight to the point, as most of her father’s log entries were. Each of the four scattered lions had been imbued with a measure of Alfor’s own Quintessence and instructions on how to return to the castle-ship on Arus after they were reawakened by their new paladin.

Of course, that didn’t help in the current situation. Blue had already used her emergency charge, Black had never had one to begin with. The Red Lion might still have the ability—if the Galra hadn’t drained that from her when they’d captured her, if she hadn’t lost the charge when they were ripped away from Vel-17—but that would only take them back to Arus. Although, if they did manage to get back there, they might be able to use the communicator they’d left with the village elder to contact the castle ship.

She didn’t hold out much hope for that plan. The odds Red still held Alfor’s gift were far too low to count on. Right now, she had to focus on getting the lions somewhere they could recharge.

Which was where she first recognized the problems with the lions being short-range craft: They had extremely limited navigational capabilities. The castle-ship had the long-range scanners and the archives with information on the known universe. No one had expected the lions to lose contact with the castle-ship, so they hadn't wasted time installing redundant systems.

Right now, the holo-map was showing a whole lot of empty space. Statistically speaking, only about five percent of celestial bodies contained enough Quintessence to support life. Allura knew that, but it had always seemed like a higher number when technology and wormholes were on her side. Now that they were forced to enter a star system before they could tell if any of its planets was alive, the universe suddenly felt like a much larger place.

They’d visited three systems so far with no luck, and Allura was beginning to worry their lions’ Quintessence wouldn’t hold out. Or worse, the lions would continue to feed on their pilots’ Quintessence until they all shriveled up and died. Given how low Allura’s own reserves were, she had perhaps two days before her body began to shut down. The humans might very well have less than that.

 _Keep your eyes on reality,_ Allura commanded herself. _You’re far too old to be frightened by crystallight tales._

She checked the scanner again, though they’d only just left behind the last dead star system. The lions were fast, but they weren’t without limits. It would take hours yet before they entered another system. How long had they been flying already? She didn’t remember, but she knew that while she searched the last system, Lance and Matt had both taken the time to rest.

Maybe she should think about sleep, too.

 _I’ll rest when the lions are able to do the same._ She was no good to anyone if she gave into fatigue now. Time was limited, and Allura had to stay alert. Matt and Lance were counting on her. Coran and the others were counting on her, assuming they even knew she’d survived. If she could only find an inhabited world where the lions could rest and Allura could discover their coordinates, then maybe she could begin making her way back toward the castle-ship. Once they were within a few hundred light-years, the castle would pick up their signals.

It was up to Allura to get them in range.

Something flashed a faint yellow-orange on the scanner. Allura blinked dumbly, not comprehending what it was she was seeing. A glitch? She checked again. The spot had moved closer, but it was still there: a tiny, isolated speck of concentrated Quintessence. It floated outside any star system, alone in empty space like…

Like a ship. Allura could have hit herself. She’d been so focused on finding a planet where the lions could rest, she’d never stopped to consider that a sufficiently large ship-based crystal would serve the same purpose.

Assuming, of course, this ship didn’t belong to Zarkon’s army.

“Matt,” she said into the comms. “Lance. Look sharp.”

Lance yawned, grunted, then turned on his visual feed. “Whassat?”

“A ship,” Allura said. Lance froze. In the other feed, Matt looked troubled. “I won’t know until we’re closer if it’s Galra, but if it’s not, we may be able to rest there.”

Matt leaned forward, tapping at his control panel. After a moment he hummed thoughtfully. “Not much out here for the Galra to be defending.”

“Unless they’ve got a secret base,” Lance pointed out.

Allura shook her head. “Too small.” They were rapidly approaching the speck, and though the sensor reading was growing brighter, it wasn’t getting any larger. “I think it’s about the same size as the castle, perhaps smaller.”

Nodding, Matt sat back in his seat and tightened his grip on his controls. “I haven’t seen any Galra ships that small that would be out here alone. Unless--”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but Allura suspected she knew what he was thinking. It could be a trap. Likely it wasn’t; there was no one out here _to_ trap except the three of them, and Zarkon couldn’t have anticipated their arrival in time to set up an ambush.

Still, she couldn’t help being wary as she led the other two closer to the ship. They slowed as they approached, and Allura kept one eye on the scanners. She left her mind open to the Black Lion, trusting that she would sense danger as quickly as any of her equipment.

All she got was a sense of exhaustion and anticipation of rest ahead. The scanners remained clear—no Galra fighters lying in ambush, no weapons locking on to the lions.

When the ship finally came into view on the main screen, Allura let out a sigh of relief. In all honesty, she wasn’t sure _ship_ was the proper term for it. It was indeed about the size of the Castle of Lions, but with none of the Altean refinement. It was an amalgamation of dozens of smaller ships, all of them welded together into a single, semi-coherent whole. “Space station” might have been a good approximation, but even that implied something far more intentional than what Allura was looking at.

“Okay, there’s no _way_ that’s Galra,” Lance said.

“Agreed,” said Matt. “Unless it’s Zarkon’s dumpster.”

Allura’s hand hovered over the communication panel. “I’m going to hail the… ship and request permission to dock.” Matt and Lance voiced their agreement, and Allura took a deep breath. A few practiced taps identified comm frequencies in the vicinity and broadcast a standard landing request.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Allura began to fear the ship was abandoned, or perhaps under duress.

Then she received a standard acquiescence and directions to an open hangar. “Looks like they’re friendly,” Allura said, though she couldn’t entirely suppress her unease. Ten thousand years ago, she wouldn’t have thought there was anything strange about the response—but this was not ten thousand years ago. This was the Galra Empire, and Allura didn’t trust anything that was this easy.

Still, the lions needed rest, and she didn’t know how far they would wander before they found somewhere else to land. She was painfully aware of Lance and Matt’s eyes on her, so she put on a brave face and led them toward the open hangar, praying she wasn’t flying straight into a trap.

They landed side by side in the open space. A few smaller ships dotted the floor around them, and a small knot of aliens marched toward them. All but the leader held guns, though at the moment all were pointed at the ground.

“Are you guys seeing what I’m seeing?” Lance asked, a note of panic in his voice.

Allura kept her own voice level, projecting confidence she didn’t feel. “Remain calm. We’re going to go down there and see what they want. Don’t make any aggressive moves.”

“She means you,” Matt said. He managed the illusion of ease better than Allura did, which would have irritated her if she wasn’t so worried about the welcoming committee waiting for her on the hangar floor. She _really_ hoped she hadn’t led them into a trap.

Steeling herself, Allura headed for the exit. She held herself tall as she emerged, Lance and Matt only a few moments behind her. The lions powered down as they exited, all three of them raising translucent shields. The Black Lion’s voice quieted to near silence as she directed all her attention toward recharging, drawing on the Quintessence of the ship’s main crystal.

“Greetings,” Allura said to the ship’s crewmembers. “I am Allura, paladin of Voltron. We mean you no harm.”

The leader held up a hand to silence her. “Don’t really care who you are. _Hive_ ’s a place for anyone with nowhere to be, so long as you ain’t Galra.”

“Great!” Lance ran a hand through his hair and grinned in that way he thought was disarming. It didn’t seem to work on the crew, but Lance was undaunted. “We’re not Galra, you’re not Galra… everyone’s happy!”

“We’re gonna have to check you,” the leader said. “Could be helping them purple bastards, couldn’t ya?”

“That’s fine,” Allura said, raising her hands to show she was unarmed. “I completely understand your caution.”

Matt and Lance looked less sympathetic, but they followed Allura’s lead and let the crewmembers search them. The Galra dagger sheathed at Allura’s waist drew some odd looks, but they seemed willing enough to believe she’d taken it from a soldier’s corpse. A knife was a knife, after all, and it posed no real threat to the _Hive_ ’s crew.

Allura re-sheathed the dagger with a frown. In all honesty, she’d completely forgotten she had it. Remembering it now dredged up the knot of questions Allura had been wrestling with since Pidge found the dagger. _Was_ it Sendak’s? The more she thought about it, the less convinced she was. It just didn’t fit with what she’d seen of the arrogant commander. That left only one option, so far as Allura could see: One of their mysterious rescuers had been a Galra.

Her mind instantly rejected the idea. This wasn’t the universe of old. This wasn’t a reality in which Galra and Altea were fast allies; that life was gone, and Zarkon had built a new Galra Empire. If Allura was going to lead Voltron to victory over that empire, she couldn’t give in to sentimentality.

Still…

Allura shook herself. Now wasn’t the time for this. The crewmembers had put their weapons away, but they still watched the paladins with distrust. She supposed it was to be expected. The _Hive_ evidently existed outside of Zarkon’s control, and anyone who chose that life had to be concerned about retribution.

Nevertheless, once the leader inquired about their intentions (Allura explained they’d been attacked by the Galra and only needed somewhere to rest for a few days), they were given a hasty tour.  _Hive_ was as eclectic as its exterior made it seem. Many of the residents had arrived in badly damaged ships, which were then absorbed into the whole. These, as well as abandoned ships that had been acquired in the _Hive's_ travels, formed the living quarters and also provided the _Hive’s_ engines and defenses. At the center of the ship was the command deck—off-limits to, as the crewmembers put it, “strays”--and various administrative areas. Laundry, food, entertainment, and more. Matt walked with a visible limp, but he brushed off Allura’s concern with an unconvincing assurance that he was only stiff from sitting in his cockpit for a day and a half straight. Allura reluctantly let the matter go.

The welcoming committee left them at the door to the rec room. Allura entered, ready to ask after their present location so she could begin planning how to get back to Coran and the others. Instead, she found a cluster of morose-looking refugees huddled around a scanner that looked as patched-together as everything else here. It was playing some kind of news program, and it didn’t take long to figure out what had the mood in the room so dour.

_\--unclear if any survived the attack. Rescue efforts will have to wait for Galra troops to clear surrounding systems, but key figures in the resistance say--_

One of the figures sitting near the scanner looked up, spotted Allura and her friends in the doorway, and hastily turned off the broadcast. Several others grumbled complaints, but far more looked relieved at the sudden silence. All of them turned to look at the newcomers with wariness and curiosity in mixed measure.

“Greetings,” Allura said. “My name is Allura, paladin of Voltron and princess of Altea.”

One or two of the listeners perked up at the mention of Voltron, several more at the name Altea. Allura couldn’t entirely hide her shock. She would have expected ten thousand years to wipe away most knowledge of her people and the Voltron Lions—though if the _Hive_ regularly listened to newscasts with contacts in some kind of resistance, they could very well know things Zarkon wanted buried.

“Voltron?” The wrinkled old man who spoke sounded skeptical. “If that old story were true, what happened on Yaltin wouldn’t have been allowed to happen.”

Allura glanced at Lance and Matt, then joined the elder at his table. He was a Trufo, a diminutive, hairless race with weak eyes but a remarkable sense of smell. Allura had first met one when she was a child, and had promptly declared, in front of the entire court, that the woman must have spent too long in the bath and shriveled up. Fortunately the woman, an ambassador, had a generous sense of humor and near infinite patience for young children. Allura still cringed to remember the incident.

She smiled now at the Trufo man, who grudgingly introduced himself as Brin.

“What happened on Yaltin?” Allura asked, automatically assuming a formal posture, her hands folded primly in her lap, her ankles crossed and tucked underneath her chair. “Please. We’ve only recently found our way into this war, and we’re still trying to get a handle on the situation.”

Brin studied them for a long moment, then sighed and crossed his arms on the table. “Yaltin is the latest planet to fall to Zarkon’s forces. We’d heard the people there were putting up a fight. The resistance was gathering troops to send aid, but then...” He shook his head.

“Then what?” Lance asked, leaning forward.

“No one’s quite sure. There are rumors—some kind of superweapon, a second warship bringing reinforcements, a week-long assault that overwhelmed the Yaltian resistance… All we know for sure is the Galra won—and won so soundly they didn’t bother leaving troops to hold the planet.”

Allura felt a chill. “But that would imply that--”

“That no one survived?” Brin laughed bitterly and turned his face toward the wall. “We were all rooting for them. Thought maybe we’d finally win one. Should’ve known better, especially after we heard the Champion was there.”

Beside Allura, Matt went rigid. “What did you just say?”

Brin stared up at him, mildly annoyed. “Zarkon sent his Champion there. Everyone knows that’s a death sentence.”

There was a moment of perfect silence, an angry red flush flooding Matt’s face. He lurched to his feet, and for one horrible moment, Allura thought he was going to attack the Trufo. Visibly gathering himself, Matt spun and stalked out the door. Allura and Lance exchanged startled looks, thanked Brin for talking with them, and chased after Matt.

As soon as the door closed, Lance snatched Matt’s arm and spun him around. “Hey, buddy, what the hell happened in there?”

“He’s lying.”

Lance blinked. “What?”

Matt jerked his head away, glaring stubbornly at the wall. Lance watched in obvious confusion, but Allura’s mind was already working through the matter.

“Champion,” she muttered. Matt stiffened, and Allura’s heart sank. “That’s what the prisoners called Shiro. The Champion.”

Matt seemed to collapse against the wall, his hand shaking as he ran it through his hair. “He’s lying. Shiro wouldn’t do that.”

Allura frowned. “Why, though? What possible motive could he have to lie about something like this?”

“I don’t know, Allura...” Lance scratched the back of his neck. “Maybe Brin just heard wrong. I never met Shiro personally, but I’ve heard a lot about him. He was a living legend at the Garrison—why would he be fighting for Zarkon?”

Grimacing, Allura shook her head. “You don’t know what Zarkon is capable of.”

Matt flinched, his grip on his hair tightening until Allura was afraid he was going to start tearing chunks out. “He’s _lying,_ ” Matt snapped. “They’re _all_ lying.”

Lance’s head whipped around, eyes widening. “ _All_?”

If possible, Matt made himself even smaller, huddled against the wall with his face turned away. Mouth hanging open, Lance stepped back, his hand falling to his side, and Allura stepped into the opening, fixing Matt with a hard look. “There’s something you aren’t telling us.” Matt licked his lips, eyes darting down the corridor as though looking for an escape. Allura grabbed his shoulder to keep him still.

“I...” Matt looked up at her, then dropped his head, his hair obscuring his face. “This… isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone say something like this—that Shiro joined Zarkon’s army.”

Lance looked stricken, and Allura felt her temper beginning to climb. She struggled for calm as she squeezed Matt’s shoulder—not hard, but a simple warning. “Who else?”

“Those prisoners we rescued from Sendak’s ship.” Matt’s voice dropped so low Allura had to lean in to hear his next words. “And someone named Rogi at that spaceport we went to.” He looked up then, lips twisted into a stubborn scowl. “But I know Shiro. He would _never_ join Zarkon.” He glanced frantically toward Lance. “You’re with me, right? Lance?”

“I… I dunno.” He held up his hands quickly as Matt’s face darkened. “I’m not saying he’s definitely evil, just… I don’t actually know him, really, and the last time I trusted a stranger, I ended up handcuffed to a tree as she flew off with my lion. So what if I'm a little cautious?"

Matt’s face darkened. “Maybe don’t _flirt_ with him and you’ll be fine.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

Allura recognized the look on Lance’s face, a dangerous mix of wounded pride and fatigue that lent itself to sharp words and a hot temper. She put a hand on his chest before his anger boiled over. “We don’t have time for this right now.” Her tone left no room for argument, and Lance backed down at once, crossing his arms and muttering under his breath in a language her lion couldn’t translate. “We need to rest, and find our bearings, and figure out how to get back to the others. Lance, you’re right to be wary, and we _will_ deal with the possibility of Shiro’s defection appropriately. Matt.” She paused here, glaring at him. He glared right back, the fire in his eyes daring her to start a fight . “We will keep an open mind as much as is prudent, and we will listen for anything that suggests these rumors are wrong, but you _must_ prepare yourself for the possibility that your friend traded his service for a release from Zarkon’s prisons. Understood?”

Matt ground his teeth, and swatted away the hand Allura still had resting on his shoulder. “I understand,” he said. The look in his eyes said otherwise. After a brief pause, Matt turned on his heel and stalked off.

“Where are you going?” Allura demanded.

“To the hangar,” Matt said. “I’ll sleep in Red tonight.”

He disappeared without another word, and Lance muttered the handful of human curses Allura had picked up—as well as several she hadn’t heard before—before turning back toward the residential chamber they had been offered for the duration of their stay. Allura lingered in the corridor outside the rec room, staring after Matt.

 _I’ve got to get through to him,_  she thought. _Somehow…_ Voltron could not be allowed to fracture over something like this, not if they were going to drive Zarkon back. As the black paladin, it was Allura’s job to hold the team together.

She was beginning to wonder if she was up to the task.

* * *

Coran and Hunk emerged from the store forty minutes later, empty-handed and grim. Pidge’s heart dropped, but they waved the others over to the table where they sat with Jeya. Pidge’s juice glass was long since emptied and sat safely on the neighboring table after one too many close calls with clumsy elbows and overenthusiastic hands. Rover had tired of his patrols and hovered near Jeya, who was at least as interested in the minor mods Pidge had given him as in the _actual_ topic of conversation. Sure, Pidge had kept it light on details, but monsters, a dead planet, and missing friends ought to be exciting enough even without mentioning Voltron.

Hunk raised an eyebrow as he approached. “Who’s this?”

“Guys, meet Jeya. Jeya, these are my friends, Hunk and Coran.”

Jeya’s eyes widened as they fell on Coran, and she shot a fleeting, panicked look at Pidge before smoothing it over. “So I guess you weren’t lying when you said you knew Alteans, huh?”

Pidge grinned. “I was telling her about what happened. She says she might have a way for us to track down the others. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah.” Jeya clicked her tongue once, nervously, then nodded. “Yes. Yeah. That’s, uh, that’s right. Wow. Sorry, I just. I’ve never seen an Altean before. People say you’re extinct, you know. Shows what they know.”

“Uh, thank you?” Coran glanced at Pidge. “I thought we were going to keep a low profile.”

Pidge shrugged. “Hey, if this gets us anywhere near the others, it’ll be worth it, right?”

Coran couldn’t argue with that, and Hunk didn’t look like he wanted to. Pidge smirked, then nodded at Jeya, who stood and gestured them toward a corridor behind the juice bar. “I’ve got friends with connections,” she said. “Trust me. They’ll know what to do.”

The corridor dead ended in an elevator. There was a card reader over the door controls. Pidge was about to send Rover to hack it, but Jeya popped off the front panel and crossed a few wires, and the door slid obligingly open. She gave a self-conscious smile at her audience.

“Urra showed me that trick. It’s faster than taking the public lifts, so um… this way.”

Jeya was right; the private elevator got them to the ground floor in no time, and Jeya waved them across the street to some kind of apartment building or hotel. This time Jeya used an actual key card to access the elevator, which took them up to the fifth floor.

“In here,” Jeya said, opening the second door on the right. “You...want something to eat while you wait? I’ve got some crackers.”

Pidge was the first into the room with Rover, Hunk and Coran close behind. “No thanks,” Pidge said. “How long until your friends get here?”

“About that...”

Something in Jeya’s voice screamed _danger_ , and Pidge spun toward the door just as it slid shut. Two towering aliens that looked like living gargoyles stood by the door; three more emerged from the bathroom. Panicking, Pidge summoned their bayard, but the aliens were faster. Something pricked Pidge’s neck before they had time to process the sleek gray guns the aliens held, and the world around them lurched.

They fell, bayard slipping from numb fingers as Rover whistled an alarm and activated his taser. He drifted out of Pidge’s line of sight, but the metallic _crack_ and the pitiful whine that followed made Pidge’s chest tighten with fear. _Not Rover._ _Don’t take him away, too._ The last thing Pidge heard before the world went dark was Jeya’s voice.

“You probably won’t believe me, but I’m really, _really_ sorry about this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it sounds like you folks are excited about this story turning into a series. I am too, and guess what? I've got some good news. Later this week I'm launching the first side story: "Mama Holt's Army." For the next four weeks (leading up to the end of AWFN), we're gonna be heading back to Earth to see what the paladins' families have been up to. This fic will continue to update on Mondays as usual; you'll just get a bonus on Fridays, so subscribe to the series or check my profile Friday night. (I'll also share the link here next week for anyone who misses it.)
> 
> This week: Karen Holt, because Pidge sure as hell didn't get their stubborn streak from Sam.


	16. Last Stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Shiro and Keith landed on Berlou, where resistance efforts have survived several months of siege. They used a Galra scouting party to locate the rebels, and then Keith attacked the other Galra to prove his intentions to the Berlua. Matt, Lance, and Allura discovered a space station called the Hive, where they heard more rumors of Shiro's defection, sparking an argument between Lance and Matt. Pidge, Hunk, and Coran visited the planet Wa'resha in search of information and a motivator for the wormhole generator, and Pidge befriended a Resha named Jeya--but Jeya led them into an ambush. Coran and the paladins were attacked and sedated (though to be fair, Jeya did apologize.)

Coran was the first to wake after the ambush, which he supposed spoke more to the ten millennia of Quintessence simmering inside him than to his own readiness for danger—not to say, of course, that he didn’t wake up swinging. The unfortunate bedside lamp had certainly learned a thing or two about tangling with Alteans.

Once he was done kicking the broken glass under the rug, he took stock of the situation. He, Pidge, and Hunk had been left alone in an unfamiliar room, each on their own cot. Pidge and Hunk’s armor had been removed, leaving them in their black jumpsuits. Coran supposed it _would_ be more comfortable to sleep like that, but that hardly seemed like the kind of thing the Galra would care about— and the Galra _certainly_ wouldn’t leave the armor stacked neatly in full view in the closet.

Aside from the cots and the (broken) lamp, the room was mostly empty. There was an evacuator through a door beside the closet and a small table with a pitcher of water and three glasses, and the rug on the floor, which was thick enough to protect feet from glass, and that was just about all.

Curiously, the exit was unlocked, though a young Piraxan—stout and fuzzy-footed with yellowish skin and black markings on his face and hands—stood guard outside. Coran judged him to be no older, relative to his people’s lifespan, than Matt and Allura, and though he made an attempt to glare Coran back into the room, the expression really didn’t suit him. Maybe it was the explosion of soft, reddish hair around his head, or the quivering ears that rose from his temples like antennae.

Frankly, he looked like a charging quiffle: soft, adorable, and only dangerous because of the mama quifftrup following behind.

“Good morning,” Coran said brightly. “Lovely day. Well, I assume it’s lovely, and daytime. We haven’t got any window in here, you know. Could be the middle of the night, I suppose.” Coran eyed the narrow, low-ceilinged corridor stretching before him. He could sense the flow of Quintessence here, though faintly. It didn’t feel like Wa’resha. “So what time base _is_ this ship running on?”

The Piraxan lad gave a start, which as good as confirmed Coran’s suspicion. They hadn’t just been abducted. They’d been taken off-planet, and there was no way to guess how far they’d traveled since.

The guard’s ears twitched and he glanced down the corridor as though for backup. Coran smiled sympathetically and patted the lad’s shoulder. “Not used to guarding prisoners, are you?”

“Prisoners?” The Piraxan turned his head sharply back toward Coran. He seemed genuinely shocked.

 _Curious_. If Coran and the humans weren’t prisoners, what did that make them?

The Piraxan shuffled his feet. “Look, I’m not really the best person to ask about… well, about anything, but you, uh, better stay here for now.”

Coran arched an eyebrow. “Well, obviously.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m afraid I’ve been stuck herding yelmores. Can’t go wandering off without these two pups. Altea only knows what they’d get up to without me. Probably blow up the whole ship!” He laughed, but the Piraxan had gone pale, glancing at Hunk and Pidge’s sleeping forms.

His hand dropped toward the laser pistol holstered at his side.

Coran grabbed his wrist before he could do anything unfortunate. “None of that now,” he said softly.

The Piraxan looked at him, baffled, and nodded, which Coran had to admit he hadn’t entirely been expecting. Where _had_ Pidge’s friend landed them?

After a moment’s hesitation, the Piraxan lifted his hand away from the pistol and pressed a button on his wrist unit. “Sir?” he said. “Um, the old guy’s awake.”

“Old!” Coran crossed his arms and huffed, drawing a nervous look from his guard. Indistinct voices chattered through his earpiece for a moment, and then he nodded.

“Yes, sir.” He bit his lip and glanced into the room once more. “The director’s on her way. You, uh, really should wait in there, probably?”

Coran supposed there could be no doubt left after that. He was no prisoner. He still didn’t know what he _was_ , but if anyone could answer that, it was probably the director. Best to wait here and see what she had to say. So he patted the Piraxan’s shoulder again and retreated back into the room.

Hunk had turned over on his cot, arms now curled around his thin pillow. He was muttering in his sleep, a string of funny-sounding human words that never managed to translate themselves. Ox valve, hot gas manifold, fuel injector… _nozzle_. Ah, humans. Coran doubted he would ever understand how they came up with these things.

Much as he hated to interrupt a good nap (and a slightly disorganized tour of human machinery), Coran knew it would be better to have everyone alert and ready for the worst when the director arrived. A quick shake (and just hint of Quintessence to clear the last of the sedative) was enough to rouse Hunk, but Pidge proved more challenging. Maybe it was their small size working against them, though even an extra helping of Quintessence didn’t seem to be doing much good. More likely, it was that Pidge hadn’t slept since the debacle on Vel-17 and their body had seized on the chance to rest.

“Maybe you should dump water on them,” Hunk suggested, pulling on the last of his armor. His hands were shaking, Coran noted—the lingering effects of his initial panic upon waking. Fortunately, there hadn’t been any more lamps around to suffer the consequences, though he _had_ come dangerously close to breaking Coran’s nose.

Hunk still didn’t fully believe Coran’s assurances that they weren’t prisoners and had wasted no time suiting up. He summoned his bayard, apparently just to feel its weight, then released it and joined Coran by Pidge’s bed.

Leaning over, he poked Pidge between the eyes. “Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, Pidge.” Hunk glanced up at Coran. “Hey, Pidge, I’m gonna borrow your laptop, okay?”

Pidge’s brow furrowed. “Don’ touch,” they mumbled.

Hunk grinned. “Yeah, I’m totally gonna borrow it. I need it to… um… look up recipes. You don’t mind if a little food goo gets under the keys, do you?”

“Oh, that’s evil,” Coran muttered, making Hunk’s grin twitch wider.

He poked Pidge again, and they turned their face toward the pillow, curling in on themself. “Nooo,” they whined. It reminded Coran of Allura when she was a toddler, pouting because Coran had to leave her to go to a meeting.

“No, you don’t mind?” Hunk asked slyly. “Cool. Thanks, Pidge. You’re the best.”

He straightened just in time to avoid a collision with Pidge’s skull as they shot upright, eyes wide open.

“Don’t touch my stuff, Hunk!” they cried. A second later the unfamiliar surroundings and lack of food-gooed laptop sunk in, and Pidge blinked.

“Uh...where are we?”

Hunk frowned at Coran. “Not prison. _Supposedly_. Also not the castle-ship or the market on Wa’resha, so… take from that what you will.”

Coran smoothed the end of his mustache and smiled back at Hunk. “Come now, Yellow. If they were enemies, would they have left you your armor and bayard? In the closet,” he added to Pidge, who was staring down at their bodysuit in confusion.

Hunk crossed his arms. “Yeah. Right.” He scoffed in a manner Coran found a tad overdramatic. “Okay, Mr. Smart Man, answer me this: If they’re friends, then why’d they ambush us and knock us out?” He rubbed his back, just below the edge of his armor. “What’s with the darts, anyway? Those things _hurt_.”

“They could have been lasers,” Coran pointed out, “and that would have hurt a lot more.”

Hunk open his mouth, then grimaced. “I dunno. Lasers might have just straight-up killed us, and you don’t ache after that.” He sat heavily on the edge of Pidge’s bed. “Okay, fine, maybe you have a point. Maybe.”

The door hissed open. Pidge, who was in the middle of stepping into their cuisse, spun, tripped over the armor pieces still scattered around them, and crashed to the floor. Hunk leaped to his feet and rushed to cover them, bayard in hand. The protective instinct was admirable, Coran noted, if unnecessary.

An Uluvi, her blue scales edged with mature gold, shuffled into the room. Her hunch was more pronounced than most Uluvi, putting her close to Pidge’s height and making her long, yellowed claws brush the ground as she walked. Her snout quivered in amusement at the sight of Pidge in a heap on the ground, but she waited politely for her audience to gather their dignity before touching her middle claw to her brow ridge in greeting. Coran returned the gesture with a shallow bow.

There was motion at the door. Coran glanced over just in time to see a teal and white blur vanish around the door frame. The Piraxan guard stared after it, brow furrowed.

Following Coran’s gaze, the Uluvi woman sighed. “Well don’t just stand out there like a quivering crel, child. Get in here.”

After a moment of silence, the young Resha Pidge had befriended stepped into the room, hands shoved deep into the pockets of a billowing jacket, hood pulled up so that it hid her eyes.

“Jeya!” Pidge cried. They gaped at her for a moment, then scowled. “What the hell?” Coran thought Pidge would launch into a diatribe, but they cut off at an electronic trill from outside. Pidge’s reprogrammed Galra drone drifted in. Once it saw Pidge, it chirped and zipped forward, circling their head several times. “Rover! You’re okay!”

“Hey,” Hunk said. “You weren’t that concerned about me and Coran.”

Pidge rolled their eyes and patted Rover’s back panel. “Hunk, you were standing right in front of me threatening my computer. What do you expect?”

Chuckling at Hunk’s crestfallen expression, Coran turned back to the Uluvi woman and Jeya, who was still sulking by the door. “Can I assume you are the director?” Coran asked the Uluvi.

“I am. My name is Anamuri.” She folded her hands at her waist. “How are you all feeling?”

“Aside from sore, tired, and pissed off?” Pidge asked, pulling Rover closer and glaring at Jeya, who flinched. “Just peachy.”

“I really am sorry, you know,” Jeya muttered. “I thought you were working for the Galra. You didn’t tell me you had an Altean with you.”

Coran felt Pidge and Hunk’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look away from the two strangers in front of him. He wasn’t surprised to hear they were enemies of the Galra, though the fact that they recognized an Altean on sight was something of a shock. “What do you mean?” he asked carefully. “Have you been looking for me?”

There was a pair of quiet hums behind him as the humans readied their bayards. Jeya’s eyes widened, and Anamuri regarded them all with curiosity.

“Not you specifically,” Anamuri said. “Just one of your kind. We have been trying to contact the Altean resistance for months.”

She kept talking, but Coran’s mind refused to keep up. The words _Altean resistance_ repeated themselves over and over in his ears, a strange noise, almost unintelligible. He swallowed, opened his mouth, and found he had no voice. _Altean resistance._ Anamuri had to be mistaken. _Alteans._

“Hang on, time out.” Hunk stepped forward, bayard dangling at his side, his other hand raised to halt the director’s monologue. “You need to back up for a second and try that one more time. Are you saying there are more Alteans out there?”

Anamuri frowned, her pupil-less green eyes staring hard into Coran’s. She said nothing for a long while, and Coran was still too stunned to speak. There had to be some mistake. He’d seen the records in the castle-ship. The destruction of Altea, the distress beacons sent out by Altean refugees, silenced one by one in the decade following Zarkon’s attack. There had been no word from the Altean people in ten thousand years.

Jeya huffed, stalking forward until she was close enough to jab one of her short, sharp claws into Coran’s chest. “Are you trying to say you don’t know about the resistance? How is that even possible? You’re Altean!” She jabbed him again, and Coran’s irritation finally overtook his shock. He grabbed the girl’s claw and pushed it away from his chest, then looked over her head at Anamuri.

“I’m afraid my knowledge of the war is—how should I put this?—out of date,” he said. He trusted these people not to want him dead, but his trust was not without limits. There were some things it was best not to spread around. “My home was attacked by the Galra, and I wound up in a cryo-replenisher. It… lasted a few ticks longer than intended. When these humans found me--” He gestured to Pidge and Hunk-- “I attempted to discover the fate of my people. I thought they had all been killed.” He hesitated, searching Anamuri’s unreadable face. It showed nothing, and Jeya was equally uninformative, though she did seem captivated by his story. “Are there really other Alteans out there? Have you seen them?”

“No one’s seen them,” Jeya said. “’Least not so you can tell it’s them.”

Coran blinked at her.

“The Altean resistance is cautious,” Anamuri explained. “They act alone, strike quickly and then disappear. They never leave their hidden bases except when they’ve disguised themselves as other races. Balmerans, Nyxt, Trufo, Resha… even Galra, if you believe the rumors.”

“Ah.” Coran closed his eyes, smiling to himself. Of course it was all rumor. _Shouldn’t have let myself believe it._

“They do exist,” Jeya insisted. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Coran shook his head. “So one Altean makes a resistance now, does it? Must have been out of it longer than I thought. Though...” He flashed a grin, fueled by Jeya’s offended scowl. “I have been known to hold off whole ranks of enemy soldiers with just a herd of yelmores and a silver spoon.”

Jeya glanced at Pidge. “Is he serious?”

“Rarely,” said Pidge. They eyed Anamuri. “Do _you_ think the Altean resistance is real?”

She nodded. “I cannot attest to them being Alteans, I suppose, but the resistance _is_ out there, and it _is_ fighting back against Zarkon’s army. Whoever they are, they stand a better chance of defeating him than anyone else. _We_ certainly aren’t making much headway without them.”

“And, uh, who exactly is _we_?” Hunk asked.

Anamuri smiled. “The Kera Sector rebellion.”

Coran raised an eyebrow. “Rebellion, eh?”

“Indeed. Not the first to rise up against the Galra, and hopefully not the last, but we’ve had a good run of it. We managed to make ourselves a thorn in Zarkon’s side for the last five years, at least, and that is something to be proud of.”

“You sound like you’re giving up,” said Pidge.

Anamuri’s smile turned sad. “I’m afraid we may not have a choice. It grows harder every day to find willing and trustworthy recruits, and we lose more pilots with each battle. Zarkon has finally tracked us down, and he’s sent one of his warships after us. The _Executioner_ , if I’m not mistaken. If we don’t disband, they will find us, and we cannot stand against them without the Alteans’ aid.”

Coran exchanged glances with the humans. He suspected they were both thinking the same thing as Coran. It was Pidge who spoke.

“Well, we aren’t the Altean resistance, but… maybe you can beat them with Voltron’s help?”

Jeya went rigid, her eyes widening. “ _Voltron?_ ” she asked, pushing back her hood. “You’re joking, right? That’s just a myth.”

“And the Altean resistance isn’t?” Pidge demanded, hands on their hips.

Hunk sighed in exasperation. “Actually,” he said, before Pidge and Jeya could start anything. “Pidge and I are two of the Voltron paladins. We can help. We’ve done it before.”

Jeya looked like she was torn between disbelief and downright anger, but Anamuri was smiling again, standing a little taller than before. “We would be in your debt,” she said, again touching her forehead with her claws. “Come, and I will tell you what we know.”

* * *

“That was reckless,” Shiro whispered. Keith answered with a withering glare. “I’m serious. What if Roan had seen you? What if someone had managed to contact Commander Dusan?”

Keith hunched his shoulders and glanced behind them. “You really want to do this now?”

Shiro resisted the urge to turn. He could sense the two rebels back there, guns trained on Shiro and Keith. The other four were ahead, leading the group through a dark, damp, winding tunnel that Shiro could only assume led into Faus. They’d taken Keith’s sword, their helmets, the wrist-mounted comm units, and the supply pouches hanging from their belts. Shiro suspected they would have taken his arm, as well, had they been able to find a way to detach it. He hated to admit it, but reprimanding Keith was the only thing keeping him calm right now.

“Yes, I want to do this now. Whatever happened to being careful? We can’t go blowing our cover like that!”

“You think the rebellion’s just going to let us waltz back into Dusan’s camp after this?” Keith asked. He didn’t sound half as worried as Shiro felt, which wasn’t helping Shiro’s mood. If anything, he seemed pleased with himself.

Shiro released a sharp breath, part anger, part resignation. “If they don’t, I’m blaming you.”

Keith eyelids fluttered in a way that suggested he was rolling his eyes—though it was hard to tell without pupils. “Look, I got the job done, didn’t I? We made contact, they didn’t kill us, now we’re going to meet with…” He hesitated. The rebels hadn’t said much after the brief battle outside, mostly just _keep quiet, don’t cause trouble,_ and _this way_. “Well, someone,” Keith finished lamely.

The worst thing was, Keith was right. Trust was hard to win, especially on a battlefield when you were wearing the enemy’s uniform, and Keith’s reckless actions had done more to open the path toward alliance than anything Shiro could have said. Things could have gone wrong, but they hadn’t. If Shiro were feeling a little more charitable, he might have even thanked Keith for his quick thinking. Vanishing for the rest of the night while they tried to reason with the rebellion was another sure way to attract Dusan’s suspicion; anything they could do to speed up the process was invaluable, even if that meant taking risks.

That didn’t mean Shiro had to like it.

The tunnel opened up into a large, furnished room. It looked like the mess hall on a Galra warship, but less austere. Cushioned chairs surrounded a half dozen round tables set with gelatinized fruit, water bottles, and vacuum-sealed meal pouches that reminded Shiro of his days on the _Persephone_. There were no windows in the room, and the tunnel that had brought them here hadn’t climbed quite as far as it had descended—likely they were still underground, either in a basement or in a specially-made bunker.

There were only a handful of others present, all but a handful of them Berlua. The rebels who had brought him here had been covered head-to-toe in armor and dust-colored rags that served as camouflage, so they’d looked mostly human—a bit shorter-limbed, a bit larger overall, with six fingers on each hand and four eyes visible through their visors. Now that he saw the Berlua dressed in casual fashion, though, Shiro could draw fewer parallels. Their reddish skin was smooth and shiny, almost like plastic, their eyes hollow black pits. Their fingers each had an extra knuckle, and they moved with a rolling gait like the ground under their feet was trying to toss them off.

There were other species present, some Shiro recognized from the Arena, others he’d never seen before. All of them stared at Keith in abject terror.

Shiro shifted closer to Keith. He wasn’t sure if his anxiety was for someone attacking Keith or Keith doing something that would further upset their would-be allies. Thankfully, neither happened, and one of the rebels who had escorted them in scurried across the room to a pair of Berlua who had stopped in the middle of sewing patches on clothes to stare at the new arrivals. The saboteur exchanged a few quiet words with the other Berlua, then stood aside as the pair stood and crossed toward the tunnel entrance.

“You want to talk,” said the one on the right.

Shiro nodded. “We do. We want to forge an alliance with you.”

The Berlua on the left hummed, then curled their fingers toward a door to Shiro’s left. “In here. Let’s…talk.”

Two of the saboteurs entered the other room with Shiro, Keith, and the Berlua Shiro assumed were some kind of resistance leaders. As soon as the door was closed, Shiro and Keith were pushed toward a pair of chairs at a large wooden table, and then the saboteurs retreated to the door to stand guard.

The leaders took seats opposite Shiro and Keith. “I am Kya,” said one of them. “This is Nue. Who are you?”

“Shiro. My friend’s name is Keith.” Shiro paused, glancing between Kya and Nue. They looked virtually identical, both of them with darker red skin than most of the Berlua who had been in the other room. Kya had a few more ridges on the crown of their head; Nue had spots on their nose that looked like freckles. Otherwise, they might have been clones.

Nue tilted their head to the side and glanced beyond Shiro to the guards at the door. “Terou says you were with a Galra squad, but that you turned on them when they attacked our soldiers.”

“That’s right,” Shiro said. “Keith and I are trying to stop Zarkon. We were only with that squad to try to find your people and offer our help.”

“What makes you think we need help?” asked Kya. “We have held out this long on our own.”

Keith leaned forward, pressing a palm against the table. “Anyone who doesn’t accept all the help they can get against Zarkon is fooling themself. He has more resources, better weapons, a larger army—no one planet can resist him forever.”

Shiro placed a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “They have a weapon, something your shields won’t stop. They used it on Yaltin, and now...” He swallowed, shaking his head. “You have resources the Galra want, which is what’s keeping that weapon at bay right now, but you can’t just endure and hope it goes away. Sooner or later, Zarkon’s going to decide this planet isn’t worth the fight.”

The guards shifted, cloth and armor rustling. “And _you_ can stop this weapon?” said one of them. Shiro thought it was Terou, who had spoken with Nue and Kya.

“I don’t know,” Shiro admitted. “But if we work together, I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“What would be even better,” said Keith, “is if we had more help. You have off-world communication, don’t you? I know there are pockets of resistance around the Empire, and armies outside the borders. Have you been able to contact any of them for help?”

Kya’s eyes narrowed. “And if we had, you think we would tell a Galra?”

Keith flinched back, mouth snapping shut. His ears folded back against his skull, and he glanced helplessly at Shiro, who closed his eyes. He had no room to judge the Berlua for their suspicion. They had been fighting Galra for months. They had every right to be wary, just as Shiro had once been. He took a deep breath and resisted the urge to leap to Keith’s defense. _They’ll see,_ he told himself. _Give them time, and they’ll see he’s not like the others._

“No,” he said. “We don’t expect you to tell us anything, certainly not today. But if you _do_ have allies who are coming to your aid, warn them about the weapon. It’s mounted underneath a Galra command ship; if Zarkon does send it here, we’ll have to destroy it from the air. Even if you don’t have allies, you need to spread the word. Part of the reason this thing is so dangerous is that no one’s expecting it. The more people know, the better chance there is of someone taking it out.”

Kya sat back, apparently satisfied, and glanced at Nue, who rested their elbows on the table and interlaced their fingers. “Is that all, then? You have come to deliver information, and then you leave?”

Shiro lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I think we have a lot more to offer than just a few warnings, but it all depends on whether you’re willing to let us help. I know you don’t trust us, but...honestly, what have you got to lose?”

Kya and Nue exchanged glances. “We will not tell you our plans,” Kya said. It sounded like there was more to the statement, though, and Shiro waited for them to continue.

Instead of Kya, it was Nue who took up the thread. “We will not send our people to help you if you encounter trouble.”

“We would not rely on you for anything important,” Kya said, their voice trailing off as though to say, _You will have to prove yourself._

Shiro was well acquainted with tests of loyalty, and he thought he would find the Berlua’s version much more tolerable than the sort of thing Zarkon’s army thought up. “Of course,” he said. “Just tell us what we need to know.”

There was another one of those loaded glances, like Kya and Nue were holding a conversation no one else could hear. The thought reminded Shiro of Deyra and the Yaltian elders, and he closed his eyes against a fresh wave of guilt. _You can’t change that now. Focus on Berlou. War doesn’t wait for grief._

“Dawn.”

Nue’s voice startled Shiro out of his thoughts, and he looked up at them, frowning. “Tomorrow?”

Kya nodded. “If you truly mean to aid us, then tomorrow at dawn you will delay or eliminate the patrols around the Galra camp.”

“Which ones?”

“Any of them,” said Kya.

“All of them,” said Nue. They smiled coldly. “Perhaps you can prove that you are of use to us.”

Shiro smiled tightly, but didn’t press for more details. The request was deliberately—and infuriatingly—vague. Dusan’s camp was large even without Orgul’s troops. If Shiro and Keith were going to deal with all the patrols, there would be no time for them to search for saboteurs. With no specific location, it would be impossible to set an ambush. The Berlua could have their pick of openings, or make their own elsewhere, or simply use Keith and Shiro as a distraction. Hell, they might not be planning to attack the camp at dawn tomorrow—and something like this would almost certainly destroy whatever trust Dusan and Orgul still had in Keith and Shiro.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. If Shiro kept waiting for the perfect time to strike, trying above all else to maintain his position in the Galra army, he was never going to get anywhere. It might be time to take a stand. If that endeared him to the Berlua, all the better.

“Does that mean you’re letting us go?” Shiro asked.

Nue’s lips tightened, but Kya only nodded, unfazed. “Your armies are creating new weapons all the time, as you have just reminded us. Why would we keep you in our city, not knowing what destruction you could cause?”

"You will go,” Nue agreed. “We will contact you if we so choose. Terou will lead you out.”

Shiro nodded and, when Kya and Nue remained silent, stood and turned toward the door, where Terou and the other soldier waited, pistols at the ready. Keith lingered for a moment at the table, and Shiro shot him a warning glance. They were walking a delicate line here. These people were not the Yaltians, who had little experience with war or espionage or betrayal. The Berlua were careful, crafty people, and Shiro and Keith couldn’t afford to push them too hard too quickly.

Keith, of course, ignored Shiro’s look.

“One more thing,” Keith said calmly, leaning back in his chair. The Berlou stared at him, expressions dark. “I don’t know who you have coming, _if_ anyone’s coming. I don’t _want_ to know. But...” He hesitated, staring at the tabletop. “You should send another message out to anyone you can reach. You should tell them we need Voltron to come to Berlou.”

Shiro sucked in a sharp breath, but the Berlua remained unfazed.

“Voltron?” Kya asked.

“A child’s tale,” said Nue. “Empty hope.”

Keith shook his head. “Voltron has returned. We’ve spoken with the paladins.” He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he wore an expression Shiro had never seen. There was desperation in it, and fear, but also hope. “It’s not enough to stop this army. Zarkon could send another. If you want your people to be free—really _free—_ you need Voltron. They’re the only ones who can stop the Galra Empire.”

* * *

The rebel ship, which Hunk had learned was called _Hope of Kera_ , returned to Wa’resha’s moon to pick up the castle-ship with its two lions. They spent the next day hiding in an uninhabited system near Wataia while Pidge and Hunk worked on the Yellow Lion, adding a cloaking device like the one Pidge had installed on Green. With only two lions, they couldn’t risk a straight battle against a Galra warship and its fleet of fighters.

Instead, their mission was sabotage. Anamuri’s informants had found the _Executioner’s_ coordinates, so Hunk and Pidge were going in. Alone. With no back-up and no way to wormhole out from their end.

Hunk could barely focus on the wrench in his hand, and twice Pidge had to stop him from shorting out a circuit. His last Ativan felt heavy in his pocket, but he resisted the urge to take it. With Lance, Matt, and Allura gone ( _dead, said_  the fear tunneling through his veins), Hunk was going to be up against a lot more tough fights before he—hell, he couldn’t even make himself think the words. Before he got home. If he got home.

_I’m never going home, am I?_

All too soon, they were hurtling through a wormhole toward the edge of the system where the _Executioner_ was stationed.

“It’s going to be fine, Hunk,” Pidge said over the comms. Hunk glanced down at their video feed in time to see them give a thumbs-up. “In and out in ten minutes. The Galra will never even know we’re here.”

“Right,” Hunk said, hoping the comms hid the way his voice shook. Pidge was right. Pidge was _totally_ right. This wasn’t a battle. It was stealth. Hunk wouldn’t even need his bayard. Pidge had cloned Rover’s ID code to a small, disc-shaped drone they’d found on the _Kera_ , which they’d lovingly dubbed Roswell. The little robot would get Hunk through most doors, and Coran was on the bridge of the castle-ship, directing the op with the aid of the partial blue-prints the resistance had managed to steal and the readout of the various sensors installed in the lions and the paladin armor.

(Hunk almost uttered the words _What could go wrong?_ before he caught himself and bit his lip until he tasted blood.)

The wormhole dumped them out on the far side of the star from their target.

“Looking good so far,” Coran said. “Your lions have pinpointed the _Executioner_ just past the fifth planet. There are a few scout ships in the area, but otherwise there’s not much activity.”

“Right.” Pidge took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Right, okay, right. Activating cloaking device.”

Hunk hit the new button on his dashboard and watched a ripple run across his view screen. “Cloaking on…? I think it’s on. I don’t think I really thought this through. _How_ do we know the cloak is working?”

“It’s working,” Pidge said firmly. “Do you see me on any of your sensors? Because I can’t see you.”

“Oh.” Hunk looked down at his sensors, which showed clear space around him. “Right. Uh, followup: What happens if we run into each other? I feel like two invisible lions are a recipe for disaster.”

“We’ll be _fine_ , Hunk.” Pidge didn’t sound annoyed, exactly, just tense and focused and maybe a little impatient. “I’ll go first, and you can come behind. We’re heading for opposite ends of the warship anyway, so we shouldn’t be close enough to hit each other until we’re on our way out. I figured out a way to keep the camouflage up longer, but we’ve still only got thirty minutes, so make sure you’re back here by then.”

Hunk nodded and waited only for the go-ahead from Pidge before he swung around the sun. The _Executioner_ appeared in the distance as a thin, shiny streak of light. Now that they were moving, it was easier to focus on anything other than the constant stream of _death, dismemberment, capture, torture, losing Pidge, losing Yellow, screwing up_ that beat against his skull with every too-quick breath.

“Coming up on the first scouts,” Pidge said. It wasn’t strictly necessary; Hunk could see the enemy ships on his dashboard just as well as Pidge, but he didn’t begrudge them the chatter. He’d noticed they talked more when they were nervous, and to be honest, it was kind of nice to hear a steady voice while his own brain was going haywire. “I’m through. Hunk, you good?”

Hunk swung around a Galra fighter, giving it more room that he probably needed to, but hey. They didn’t have any actual proof that the Galra didn’t have some kind of proximity alarm that could see through the cloaking device. Better safe than sorry, right? “I’m good.”

“Heading for the communications array.”

“Careful in there, Pidge,” Coran said. “You’re going to be right in the heart of their command deck. Take it slow—not _too_ slow, mind you, just. Don’t get caught.”

Pidge smiled a little. “Thanks for worrying, Coran, but I’ll be fine. Good luck with that photon cannon, Hunk.”

“Yeah, sure, no problem.” Hunk laughed nervously, hugging the warship’s hull as he headed up toward the cannon mounted on top. “It’s not the photon cannon I’m worried about.” The particle shield shimmered on his viewscreen, highlighted by Yellow’s scanners. He’d really been hoping they wouldn’t bother with shields out in the middle of nowhere, but of course he wasn’t that lucky.

_Guess it’s time to find a place to dock._

Anamuri had shown them models of maintenance hatches that dotted the warship’s exterior. They were rarely used and small enough not to warrant lots of extra security, which meant Rover and Roswell should be able to get their respective paladins inside without trouble.

“Okay, slight problem,” Pidge said. “There are no maintenance hatches on the command deck.”

Coran made a small noise of disappointment. “I was afraid of that. What about this one here?”

“I see it. Looks like it’ll put me almost directly below the communication’s array. As long as I can find an elevator shaft or an air duct, I should be able to get up to the command deck without it taking forever.”

“That’s about the best we can hope for. Take it away, Green. Yellow, how’s it coming?”

Hunk scanned the hull just outside the shield. “I think I’ve found one,” he said. “If the inside of this place looks like I think it should, I can cut across to another hatch inside the shield. There’s probably lots of security up there on the inside, right? So it’s probably better to go down the barrel from the outside and just...” He swallowed. “Try not to think about what would happen if it fired while I’m inside.”

* * *

Dawn came too soon.

Keith slept fitfully and woke less confident in their plan than ever. The whole thing felt like a bad joke. Even if they weren’t straight up killed for treason, what were they going to accomplish? The Berlua had very clearly said that Keith and Shiro were on their own.

Fortunately, they'd managed to convince Dusan their late return had been because they tried to track the rebels who’d ambushed Roan’s squad back to Faus. Anyway, he didn't challenge their story, though Keith _knew_ Dusan saw through the lie. But he’d been called away by another officer to discuss some kind of personnel issue before he could do anything more than reprimand them for failure to check in and order a squad to begin searching the area where Keith claimed to have lost the rebels’ trail. (It was, of course, nowhere near the actual tunnel. He was annoyed with the Berlua; that didn’t mean he wanted them dead.)

So, yes, Keith was worried. As they prepared for treason, he kept feeling eyes watching him, a constant itch between his shoulders. _It’s not enough we have to pull this off with no time to plan,_ he thought.

“You realize this is basically suicide,” Keith had muttered to Shiro in their quarters that evening. “Right?”

Shiro gave him a tight smile. “We’re running out of options. We can’t do anything on our own, and we can’t keep Dusan off our scent forever. As long as we have to cut and run, we might as well go out in a blaze of glory.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” Keith said, but he couldn't entirely hide his grin.

It was an hour before dawn when they rose. The camp was already beginning its morning routine, so Keith and Shiro didn’t draw undue attention as they visited the armory for flash bombs, incendiary grenades, and rifles.

There were no words as they headed out into the grayish predawn light. They’d volunteered to join the search for the tunnel into the city, which Keith had directed to an area just beyond the camp perimeter, where the rough ground provided plenty of cover. Whatever foliage had once surrounded Faus, Dusan had long since ripped it out or burned it to the roots, but he couldn’t do anything about the ground. It felt as solid as stone when Keith walked across it, but it shifted before the wind like sand, piling up into dunes taller than most Galra that shifted from day to day.

Keith and Shiro stashed their gear in the shadow of one such stone dune, then went to check in with the officer in charge of the search. It was a flimsy alibi—everything about this plan was flimsy, really—but it was the best they were going to get. They only needed to buy themselves a few minutes.

The sun breached the horizon just as they returned to their cache and donned the cloaks and cloth masks Shiro had stolen from the laundry facilities late last night.

“This sounded more impressive last night,” Keith muttered. He slid a bandolier full of grenades over his shoulder and grabbed his gun.

Shiro frowned at him. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”

“Our alibi’s a joke, our disguises are shit, we’ve got no place to go once we’re discovered, and we’re going to be executed before we do any real damage. _How_ is that being pessimistic?” Shiro only shook his head, which Keith had to assume meant, _We’re doing the right thing, so it’ll all work out._ Keith was far too realistic for that sort of thinking. He glanced at the sky, as though Voltron might appear there at any moment to put a stop to their bid for martyrdom. The sky remained a clear, placid gray tinged pink at the horizon, and Keith sighed. “Blaze of glory?”

Shiro’s hand clapped his shoulder. “Blaze of glory.”

They settled into the shadow of a stone dune and waited. The one advantage they had was that Keith’s rank gave him access to deployment records. He’d reviewed them last night, memorizing patrol routes and timings, picking out locations for possible ambushes and isolated skirmishes.

The first thing to do was get a hold of one of the Galra landspeeders.

Keith checked the time on his wrist unit. “About twenty-five ticks,” he whispered to Shiro.

“Right.” Shiro lay flat against the side of the dune, only his head and the barrel of his rifle peeking up over the top. His finger hovered over the trigger as he peered through the scope toward the gulley between two dunes where the patrol was slated to arrive. Keith checked the cloth tied over his mouth and nose, tugged the hood of his cloak lower. His armor was completely hidden under layers of fabric, his hands covered with gloves that felt too tight to be truly comfortable. Only his eyes would give him away as Galra—same with Shiro, whose skin was at least vaguely close to the appropriate color. If they kept their heads down, they might pass for Berlua, at least from a distance.

Privately, Keith thought the disguises were an unnecessary precaution, but Shiro had insisted. As long as they were going to do this, they were going to do it right, and that meant not giving away anything for free.

Keith heard the speeder before he saw it. Shiro took a steadying breath, then fired twice in quick succession. The flash of laserfire was all but lost in the rosy sunrise, but the sound of the engine slowed to a quiet purr.

Shiro climbed to his feet and ran in a crouch down into the gully, Keith close behind. The speeder coasted toward them, engines idling, pilot and spotter slumped in their seats. Shiro’s shot had taken the pilot in the chest, the spotter square between the eyes. Keith shoved the pilot out of his seat onto the floor of the speeder, then climbed in behind the controls. Shiro jumped in behind them, and they took off. Keith’s nerves itched to push the speeder to its limits, to race across the dunes or rise into the air. He felt exposed so close to the surface, traveling so slowly, but the longer they passed for an ordinary patrol, the better.

Shiro piled the dead Galra in the rear of the speeder, out of his and Keith’s way, then settled in with his rifle, scanning the skies.

Dusan’s patrol comprised three types of security—four if you counted the ships shuttling troops overhead, each manned by lookouts who watched the surface for signs of enemy movement. Keith hadn’t figured out a way to deal with that particular problem, though, so he pushed it out of his mind.

First were the ground patrols: a dozen speeders like this one flying a set pattern around the camp. Those would be the hardest to take down, but they were also the easiest for the Berlua resistance to avoid, given the distance between them and the predictable route.

Next were the aerial patrols, a hundred or so drones flying randomized patterns to help cover the blind spots between ground patrols. Those were the biggest threat, so Shiro was already on it, his eyes on the pink-streaked gray sky. The drones were small, fast, and hard to spot, but Shiro was taking them out one at a time with carefully aimed shots. Sooner or later—hopefully later—the command center would notice the disappearing drones and send out an alert. On the bright side, at least according to Shiro, that would draw even more attention away from any saboteurs headed for the base. Keith hoped Shiro didn’t expect that to cheer him up.

The final piece of perimeter security were the barricades—particle barriers reinforced at ground level with steel pylons interspersed with guard towers at regular intervals. Those were Keith’s job.

“Ready?” Keith asked, not taking his eye off the ground beneath him. It looked like a storming sea frozen in time, stone waves surging upward toward the speeder. Keith gave the engines a little more power, skimming close enough to the surrounding dunes to raise the fur on the back of his neck.

Shiro fired his rifle at another drone. “Ready when you are, _Commander_.”

There was a dry twist to the title, and Keith snorted. “Is that snark, soldier?” He veered away from the patrol route, angling them back toward the particle barrier around the camp. “I think that was snark. I could have you written up for that.”

“Oh, I’d love to see _that_ report. ‘Shirogane showed disrespect for the chain of command while helping me undermine Prime Commander Dusan’s invasion of Berlou. Suggested disciplinary action: janitorial duty.’”

Keith barked out a laugh as the first guard tower came into view ahead. The comms chirped with an incomming message, and then a voice advised them to return to their usual patrol route. Keith ignored the message and sped up, reaching up for one of the grenades stashed in his bandolier.

“Patrol craft DS-22, return to designated route immediately. DS-22, do you copy?”

Keith silenced the comms. He held the grenade in his right hand, the speeder’s controls in his left. Shiro shot down another drone. The guard tower’s shadow fell across the nose of the speeder. Keith grasped the pin between his teeth and yanked, lobbed the grenade at the base of the tower, then gunned the engine and sped off. The sound of the explosion rattled his teeth, the shockwave jostling the speeder. Keith rode it out, his grip on the controls white-knuckled.

A siren sounded behind them.

“Guess that means we’re done with stealth,” Shiro said blandly. He fired two shots, and a falling drone shattered against the wing of the speeder.

Keith grinned. “Good. I was starting to get bored.”

* * *

Pidge kept up a running commentary as they crept through the _Executioner’s_ interior, hoping it would help distract Hunk from the sheer insanity of what they were attempting. They didn’t want to risk missing important information from Coran, so they stuck to the open channel, and if Coran thought the chatter was because of Pidge’s nerves, then… Well, he wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“Seriously, though, who designs these ships? It’s like Zarkon _wants_ his soldiers to have migraine-inducing eye strain. Would it kill you to turn the lights up a little? God.”

Footsteps up ahead quieted Pidge for a moment, and they retreated into a shadowed nook behind—what was that? A power line? Modern Galra art? It looked like a glass tube with lightning inside, if lightning didn’t actually illuminate anything, and it probably wasn’t especially safe. That was the other design flaw on these warships: no regard for safety standards. Whatever. At least they wouldn’t be spotted here, hopefully. They grabbed Rover, covering his lights with their arm, and waited.

The footsteps drew nearer, and Pidge flexed their free hand, resisting the urge to summon their bayard. They couldn’t risk the flash, not when the whole ship was so damn dark. The Galra were almost on top of them, anyway, and now that they were so close, Pidge heard the sound of something being dragged. Shadows passed by, difficult to see through the tube of lightning, and Pidge’s curiosity got the better of their caution. They poked their head out of their nook. There were three Galra, only one of them armed. The other two had their hands full dragging an alien in familiar purple rags.

Pidge’s mouth ran dry. “Prisoners.”

“What?” Hunk asked. “What did you—Did you say _prisoners_? Where? Who?”

Pidge bounced on the balls of their feet for a moment, then huffed and took off after the Galra and their prisoner. “I don’t know,” they whispered. “But they’re taking a prisoner somewhere, maybe back to the cells.”

Coran interrupted before Pidge could say anything else. “Pidge, no.”

“I can’t just _leave_ them here! You saw what they did on Vel-17. What if--?” They stopped themself. They weren’t naive enough to hope their father was on this ship. Matt’s escape was more good fortune than anyone had any right to hope for in one lifetime. It didn’t matter, anyway. Pidge wasn’t letting the Galra hurt anyone else the way they’d hurt Matt.

“Pidge, I understand your frustration,” Coran said. “But you _must_ focus on the mission.”

The guards stopped at a door, and Pidge watched from around the corner, silently summoning their bayard. “If we leave them here, we’re responsible for whatever happens to them.”

“No. You’re not.” Coran sighed. “I want to help them, too. Honestly I do. But Anamuri is counting on us to disable the _Executioner_ , and we can’t do that if the Galra realize someone was on their ship.”

The door opened, and the Galra with their prisoner entered a small elevator. Pidge waited for the door to close, then sprinted over, wedged the tip of their bayard between the door and the frame, and pried it open. The elevator car was barely visible as it descended.

“Coran is right, Pidge.” Hunk’s voice was strained, but he managed to keep it even. “It’s just you and me out here. We can’t fight a warship on our own.”

Pidge closed their eyes. They knew Coran and Hunk were right. If they screwed up here, a lot of people on the _Kera_ were going to die. A lot more, probably, than were being held on this ship. The smart thing to do was to get to the communications array and finish what they’d come here for. That didn’t make it any easier to let the prisoner go.

“Fine,” they said at length, less a word than a grunt. “But we’re getting the prisoners out of here the first chance we get.”

“Agreed, one hundred percent.”

Coran released a long breath. “I won’t argue with that. Have you found the communications array yet?”

“Not quite.” Pidge glanced up the elevator shaft, squinting to try to find somewhere to anchor their bayard. It was impossible to see anything in the darkness, though, so they just fired blindly and tested the line before swinging out into the shaft. “I found an elevator, though. Heading up now.”

Coran’s blueprints were incomplete, but he estimated that Pidge had entered the ship six decks below their target. Pidge retracted their bayard’s cable slowly, counting floors as they passed dim seams where the doors were. At six, they stopped, pressed their ear to the cold metal of the door, and listened.

“I think it’s clear,” they said. “Rover, you ready, buddy?”

Rover chirped an affirmative, and Pidge took a deep breath. It really sucked that they weren’t allowed to just cut through the door or something easy like that. _Too obvious_ , Coran said. _They’ll know you were there,_ Coran said. Yeah, well Coran wasn’t the one trying to brace himself against the walls of an elevator shaft to pry a door open. Pidge was practically horizontal, their feet braced against one side of the shaft, their left arm and shoulder against the other, firing their jets for added stability as they jammed their bayard into the seam. Lucky for Pidge, Rover was small and quick. He zipped through the narrow opening and activated the door controls from the other side. Pidge flared their jets and tumbled into the corridor.

The lights were brighter here, which Pidge took as a good sign. “This must be the command deck,” they muttered. “It’s like a billion times nicer than the one I came in on. Good to know there’s classism among the evil aliens bent on conquering the universe, too. I was starting to think humans were uniquely shitty that way.”

“Hacking now, social reform later,” Hunk said. “Oh, and just in case you were interested, I found the airlock I was looking for. Headed up to the photon cannon now.”

“Twenty minutes of cloaking left,” Coran said.

Hunk groaned. “I was trying to forget about that.”

Pidge glanced both ways down the corridor, which was empty—for now. They could hear voices behind some of the doors. Rover, who had downloaded a copy of the blueprints, headed to the right, and Pidge followed. “You’d better not forget, Hunk. I want to save the prisoners, not become one.”

They were close to the communications array, thankfully. Around two corners, through an air duct, and they were there. The room was dark and quiet, the sort of place no one bothered to go unless there was trouble. Fortunately, Pidge wasn’t planning on causing the sort of trouble that drew attention. They dropped from the vent on the ceiling to the floor, grabbed the cable Rover extended for them, and plugged into the long-range transmitter.

Rover projected a monitor filled with code, and Pidge tapped a button on their armor to call up a holographic keyboard. It had taken some time to get used to typing on nothing, but it was a massive improvement over trying to lug their laptop everywhere. Rover installed the program Pidge had written, and Pidge ran a few tests to make sure everything was working.

“Testing,” they said, sending a status report through the transmitter to Zarkon’s high command.

After a moment of silence, Coran released a sigh. “Looks like it’s working,” he said, his voice sounding a little thin. “The _Kera_ received your message on its proxy.”

Pidge smiled. It was elegant, really. The _Executioner_ would still be able to send and receive communication like normal. They just wouldn’t realize it was the resistance they were talking to. That meant they would only get the information Anamuri wanted them to have and—more importantly—they wouldn’t be able to call for reinforcements. “Sorry, CATS,” Pidge said, unplugging Rover’s cable and heading for the door. “All your base are belong to _me_ now.”

“For great justice.” Pidge could _hear_ Hunk’s eyes rolling, but that only made them smile wider. “You wanna hold off on the memes until we _actually_ finish the mission, or are you just gonna gif your way back to the castle?”

Pidge peered out into the hallway and, finding it clear, jogged back toward the elevator. “I’m going, I’m going. Spoilsport. How are things on your end?”

There was a moment of silence. Then: “Just spiffy.”

* * *

There was something deeply unsettling about drifting in zero gravity so your eyes were three inches from the mouth of a cannon that could _literally_ turn moons into space dust.

Well, okay. There was also something inherently _cool_ about it, the way all the pieces fit together, the way a laser the size of a blue whale started with a network of crystals the size of pool balls set into a parabolic dish, then focused—using a cylindrical shell made up of six-inch-square reflective panels—through a series of lenses. It really was quite clever, though it was ruined somewhat by the knowledge that this was a Galra weapon and that it had probably killed a lot of people.

Hunk would rather he not be added to that list of casualties, so he opted not to gawk at the shiny machine, just get straight to work sabotaging it.

It would have been easier if the resistance had had some blueprints of the cannon, or even a basic understanding of how it worked. As it was, Hunk was basically just crossing his fingers and hoping he’d struck the right balance between ‘so subtle it doesn’t make a difference’ and ‘so obvious the Galra have already noticed someone’s messing with their stuff.’

Optics weren’t exactly Hunk’s specialty, but he remembered a fair amount of what he’d learned in his physics class at the Garrison. It looked like the ‘photon cannon’ was basically just a bajillion smaller lasers focused and amplified to a massive scale. Screw up the focus enough, and the laser would start to look less like a laser and more like regular old light. He wasn’t entirely sure if the mirror panels were there to focus the laser or just to contain it, but either way they had to go. A misaligned panel here, a missing one there, a whole stretch along the topside of the barrel angled just _slightly_ down…

If nothing else, it would probably make for a killer laser light show.

He took full advantage of Roswell’s greater maneuverability in zero-G to nudge more mirrors out of alignment by basically turning the little drone into a larger-than-life pachinko ball. Once he’d done about as much as he could with the mirrors, short of straight-up smashing them (again, probably a little too far to the ‘neon sign that screams _sabotage'_  side of the spectrum), he drifted back and studied the lenses. Those were where the bulk of the focusing happened, so he couldn’t ignore them altogether. The problem was that they were all attached to what Hunk could only assume was a focusing mechanism—tracks running the length of the barrel and a frame that could be rotated independently of the cannon’s aim. Hunk could move them, sure, mess up the alignment. They’d probably be able to tell, though, and even if they didn’t, the first shot would have to do some major damage to the _Executioner_ , because once they saw what was happening, they’d either be able to fix it or just program the computers to compensate for the misalignment.

What he really wanted to do was cut the lenses. Change their shape. Maybe just make a little divot in one of them. Irregularities like that would be harder to compensate for, harder to repair, and more likely to jack up the rest of the ship without someone noticing that, hey, somebody turned that lens to forty-five degrees, we should maybe get on that. Unfortunately, Roswell didn’t come equipped with any convenient glass-cutters or lasers or…well, anything really. It was basically just a camera and a bunch of Galra security protocols wrapped up in a shiny white UFO casing.

Pidge was still chattering away on the comms—they’d made it back to the level they’d entered on, but were stuck in a utility closet while they waited for, apparently, an honest-to-god parade of Galra.

Hunk wasn’t really listening, to be honest. He summoned his bayard and stared at it. Inactive, it didn’t look like much. A big yellow A with a gap at the top. Allura had said the bayards responded to their paladins, taking a form that suited them. Which, honestly, didn’t really _mean_ anything. How did the bayards even know what form to take? Was it based on the paladin’s personality, or their needs or desires? Matt’s bayard had two forms; did that mean any of them could change shape?

From the very beginning, Hunk had been fascinated by the bayards. He wanted to know how they worked, what their limits were. Hunk's laser Gatling gun thing couldn’t be more different from Pidge’s electric dagger-slash-grappling hook. But could they push those boundaries even more? Could they make a bazooka? A flamethrower? What about a stiletto? Could they only be weapons, or could they turn into other kinds of tools? After all, the bayards were basically the Swiss army knives of outer space.

Hunk had a theory. He’d spent the last two weeks watching Matt, trying to figure out how he got his bayard to form a sword sometimes and a gun other times. It was usually a conscious choice, but sometimes it would form as the wrong weapon, and Matt would have to try again (sometimes more than once) to get the version he wanted. From what Hunk’s observations, he theorized it had something to do with Matt’s emotional state. When he was nervous, it was more likely to appear as a gun. When he was angry, or when an enemy attack surprised him, it tended to form a sword instead.

Maybe it was more accurate to put it another way: When Matt wanted to stay far away from the enemy, his bayard gave him a ranged weapon. When he wanted to hit something, or when he was in danger of being hit himself, it gave him a melee weapon. The bayard took on the form best suited to the situation.

Anyway, that was the theory. Hunk had been trying to figure out a way to test it, but the whole Vel-17 thing had put that plan on hold.

Now was as good a time as any to try. Hunk stared at his bayard, then glanced up at the lens before him. This one was three feet in diameter, the rest of them even larger. Hunk would need a knife, maybe even a sword, and it would have to be sharp enough to cut glass. On Earth, Hunk would have said diamond-edged, but aliens had energy weapons that might do a better job. Hopefully the bayard didn’t expect him to design the dumb thing, because Hunk was not a weaponsmith.

_Space magic, don’t fail me now._

Closing his eyes, Hunk activated his bayard.

He could instantly tell it was different from its usual form. It was lighter, for one, and the grip was completely different. Less a handle, more a hilt. He opened one eye, then let out a delighted laugh.

“What?” Pidge asked. “What happened?”

Hunk turned the blade over, grinning down at it. It looked a little like a machete—thick and sturdy, with a single edge and a tapered end. The edge of the blade glowed faintly yellow, and when Hunk focused on it, the light seemed to intensify. “I’ll show you later,” he told Pidge. “Give me just another minute; I’m almost done here.”

The blade cut through the lenses effortlessly, and Hunk made quick work of it. He cut each lens once—a small divot, slightly off-center in the first; a smooth plane in the front edge of the second, and so on down the line. He didn’t have time to try to figure out the geometry of it; he just cut and hoped it would make enough of a difference. If nothing else, it would be hell to replace all those lenses. If Lance were here, he’d call that better than the actual goal, high-five Hunk, and head back to the lions.

Coran called a ten-minute warning. Hunk nodded once, dismissed his bayard, and headed back to the airlock with Roswell as quickly as he dared. It was time to get out of here and back to somewhere a little less terrifying.

The upper decks were as quiet as they’d been on the way in. Maybe it was the middle of the night on the ship, or maybe there just wasn’t anything interesting in the area. Hunk wasn’t going to question it. In and out. He didn’t need any excitement. He’d gotten in. Now he was getting out. Two minutes to Yellow, tops. That left five whole minutes to get back to the far side of the sun. It would be close, but Yellow could book it when she had to. She always came through in a pinch.

So of course that was when he ran into the first Galra he’d seen this whole mission.

“You’re _kidding_. Commander Vanda?”

Hunk froze for just an instant, then waved Roswell toward the door controls for what he hoped was an empty room. Roswell opened the door and Hunk darted inside. A split second before the source of the voice rounded the corner, the door slid shut behind Roswell. Hunk leaned back against it, clutching his bayard, and focused on his breathing.

“Right? What’re they sending us all the way out there for?”

“Don’t ask me. The _Consul’s_ not even really a warship, if you think about it.”

“ _Consul_... Is that the druids’ ship?”

“ _Vrekt_ , no. Don’t let Haggar _or_ Vanda hear you say that. Vanda’s got her own researchers and I guess they’re working on something big. What’s it called…? Project Balmera, I think.”

Hunk felt his blood run cold. _Project Balmera_? He didn’t like the sound of that. His thoughts turned toward Shay. Was she in trouble? Was it because Voltron had chased off the Galra? Hunk would never forgive himself if he’d put Shay’s people in danger. They should have stayed there longer, made sure the Balmerans were actually safe.

The voices were fading now, but Hunk pressed his ear against the door, straining to hear just a few more words—anything that might give him a better idea what Project Balmera was. All he heard was one of the voices groaning and saying something about _waste of a perfectly good warship if you ask me._ Then they were gone. Hunk cautiously poked his head back out into the corridor. It was empty, and for just a second Hunk thought about going after the two Galra.

Then he reminded himself that was a stupid idea, and that he didn’t have time to waste.

“Come on, Roswell,” he whispered, and sprinted the rest of the way back to the airlock where he’d left the Yellow Lion. “I’m here,” he told the others, strapping in. “How long have we got?”

“Three minutes,” said Pidge.

“Cutting it a little close, there, don’t you think?”

“We’re _fine_ , Coran, calm down. I’m waiting for you behind the sun, Hunk, so you’re all clear.”

Hunk pulled away from the ship, spun, and jammed the controls forward. Yellow rumbled, then shot away from the warship, straining for every ounce of speed she could get. The viewscreen began to ripple as he rounded the star, and a moment later the Green Lion appeared, curled up like a cat taking a nap. She looked up as Yellow approached, stretched, and came to join her near the coordinates where Anamuri was going to open the return wormhole.

Hunk returned Pidge’s greeting mechanically and hardly noticed as he dove into the wormhole. All he could think of was the Galra and that project they’d mentioned. They had to find out more about Project Balmera.

* * *

Shiro glanced over his shoulder at the line of speeders following them. Five minutes ago, the horizon had been clear. Now, with a total of three towers and seventeen drones out of commission, they’d amassed quite the following. It should have been worrying, but there was a peculiar sort of giddiness that came with taking a stand, however fatal it proved to be. For the first time in over a year, he was playing by his own rules.

“Well,” he said to Keith, raising his voice to fight the howling wind. “On the bright side, I think we’ve managed to distract at least half of the ground patrols.”

Keith glanced upward as a shadow passed over them. “And then some.”

Shiro grabbed the last of his incendiary grenades, pulled the pin, and tossed it off the back of their speeder. The first few pilots saw it coming and peeled off, but the next wave wasn't as quick. Shiro watched them go down in a storm of fire and smoke, something akin to guilt lodged in the back of his throat. He hoped the Berlua were taking advantage of the distraction, because for all the flash of their last stand, Keith and Shiro weren’t winning the war today.

“How many grenades do you have left?”

“Three,” said Keith. “Two after this next tower.”

Shiro grunted. “I think this is going to have to be our last. We can’t keep this up forever, you know.”

“You only say that because you haven’t seen me fly.”

Even as Keith spoke, he had to swerve to avoid a speeder that had appeared from the shadow of the guard tower ahead. The speeders weren’t equipped with any heavy weapons, just whatever the pilot and spotter had on them, but the Galra weren’t afraid to lose a few scouts in attempts to ram the saboteurs. Shiro grabbed the side of the speeder to steady himself. As soon as Keith straightened out, Shiro raised his rifle and took aim at the other speeder as it spun around.

His shot took the pilot in the shoulder, and the craft spun dangerously, clipped a stone dune, and disappeared into a hollow in the land.

“Hold on!” Keith shouted. Shiro found a handhold just as Keith spun them back out toward empty dunes. The guard tower exploded behind them, and Keith rode out the shockwaves before punching the engine. Their pursuers had gained some ground on them by now, and a few of the spotters opened fire with their rifles. Shiro would have returned fire except that Keith had decided to play chicken with the landscape, weaving between dunes, using them as the riskiest form of cover possible. Shiro tried not to pay attention to the constant stream of near-misses. They’d agreed before they started that they wouldn’t lead the Galra back to the tunnel, no matter how bad it got. They couldn’t betray the Berlua like that.

Of course, that meant they had nowhere to go, but that didn't stop Keith from running. He wasn't going to make this easy for the Galra; Shiro respected that.

It was only a matter of time before the heavy artillery got involved. Keith managed to dodge the first shot from overhead, straining the engines as shattered stone rained down around them.

The second laser impacted twenty feet ahead of them, and Keith barely had time to lift the nose of the speeder, turning the hull into a shield that saved them from instant death, then left them crashing to the dunes in a cloud of smoke and shredded metal. Shiro was thrown free of the wreckage and rolled to a stop in the shadow of a shattered dune. A chunk of stone had been vaporized, leaving a concave hollow in the side of the dune, hairline fissures radiating outward like spiderwebs. As Shiro watched, dazed, the stone around the hollow melted, streaming away like loose sand and gathering on the ground around Shiro.

The sound of engines startled his wits back into him and he sat up. The stone sand hardened in protest of his sudden movement, thin brittle layers snapping as he pulled himself free. Keith was already on his feet, one hand pressed against his side, the other holding a flash bomb. He backed toward Shiro as the Galra closed ranks around them.

“I knew it.”

One of the speeders stopped directly in front of Keith, and Commander Orgul jumped down, her face a mask of rage. Heart pounding, Shiro activated his arm as Keith drew his sword.

Orgul’s eyes turned to Keith. “I always knew you were a coward,” she said. “Didn’t think you’d have the guts to turn traitor.”

Keith tugged his mask down to grin at Orgul, a wild look in his eyes. “Maybe I just needed to find something worth fighting for.”

Shiro saw him drop the flash grenade just in time to turn away, throwing his left arm up to cover his eyes. There was a muted _pop_ , followed by a flash of light and angry shouts. Keith grabbed Shiro’s arm and towed him away, ducking between the encircling speeders and slithering down into a gully. Shiro knew there was no chance for escape, but he ran anyway. He had no choice. Orgul could have him shot if she wanted, but Shiro wouldn’t let himself be captured. Not again.

All too soon the disorganized shouts behind them yielded to snappish commands. Engines hummed and feet pounded across stone.

Keith and Shiro crested another dune, and as they dropped down the steep leeward face, hands appeared and pulled them backward into darkness. The stone dune sealed itself behind them, leaving them in inky blackness dispelled only by the light of Shiro’s arm. He turned, ready for a fight.

Instead of Galra, however, he found Terou and another of the saboteurs from the squad he and Keith had saved.

“What--?”

Terou pressed a cool, bony finger to Shiro’s lips and gestured upward. In the silence, Shiro could faintly distinguish the sound of footsteps like a heartbeat pounding against the stone. They stood on a small metal platform in a tunnel like the one they’d used the day before, stone reinforced with metal and clear plastic. With the flick of a lever, Terou sent the platform hurtling down into darkness. It was difficult to say how deep they went, smooth, shiny wall a blur as they sped along.

At the bottom, Terou turned to them and smiled. “An impressive display, strangers.”

Shiro raised an eyebrow, deactivating his arm as lamps powered on around them. “I thought you weren’t going to help us.”

“Not that we’re complaining,” Keith said. “It’s just… unexpected.”

“As were your actions,” said the other Berlua. “The Committee expected a betrayal.” They looked suddenly sheepish and ran their fingers over the ridges on their scalp. “Collapsed a whole section of the tunnels to keep you out, actually. Seems a little silly now.”

Shiro shook his head. “Not at all. You have to look after your people. Though that still doesn’t explain why you’re _here_.”

“You saved my team,” Terou said with a shrug. “I wanted to believe there was a reason for that. The Committee allowed me to watch you today, just in case you proved more honorable than anticipated.”

“Does this mean you believe us now?” Shiro asked, allowing himself a small smile.

Terou grinned and slapped him on the back. “You are not dead.” He said it like that was all that mattered--and maybe it was. The two Berlua turned and struck out down the tunnel toward Faus, automatic lights coming on to light the way. Shiro turned toward Keith, who was staring up the dark elevator shaft, a distant look on his face. “Something wrong?”

“Hm?” Keith shook himself, trying and failing to hide a smile. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

“About what?”

Keith’s eyes glinted with a sardonic sort of amusement. “Victory or death,” he said. “Somehow, I don’t think _this_ is what Zarkon had in mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that I just launched a side story called _Mama Holt's Army_. You can read the first chapter [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8465635/chapters/19394989) if you haven't already, and don't forget to check back Friday for the new update.
> 
> This week: Eli Kahale (the dadfriend of Mama Holt's army.)
> 
> Also, it's NaNo time! If anyone else is participating, feel free to add me on [NaNo's site](http://nanowrimo.org/participants/rhymebito). You can also find me on [Tumblr.](http://squirenonny.tumblr.com)


	17. The Enemy of My Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Pidge and Hunk jointed a rebellion and snuck aboard the Executioner to sabotage its photon cannon and redirect long-range transmissions to the rebellion's command ship. Meanwhile Keith and Shiro contacted the resistance on Berlou only to be met with suspicion. Undeterred, they took out a large chunk of the Galra war camp's perimeter defenses in one final blaze of glory before fleeing the army with the help of a few grateful Berlua.

Transmission Type: Distress Beacon  
Encryption: Standard  
Coordinates: 6788.244, 4234.002, -3496.685, B  
Planet Berlou, Faoril System

_Planet under siege. Galra warships present. Seeking Voltron. Please relay._

* * *

Coran counted it no small blessing that the distress beacon arrived in the small hours of the morning, when both Pidge and Hunk were off sleeping or engaged in their own projects. The Castle of Lions didn’t usually announce new distress beacons; they encountered more as they traveled farther from Arus, many of them months, even years old. Coran and Allura had agreed the fledgling paladins didn’t need the constant reminders of the scope of their task, and Coran had taken it on himself to dig through the signals each day, weeding out old and repeating signals. He’d set it up so the computers only issued an alert for true emergencies—signals originating within a set radius and timeframe.

The fact that this one also mentioned Voltron by name made it that much harder to ignore.

Coran scanned the metadata twice through before copying the file to a handheld and clearing the alert. He dawdled for only a moment before hailing the _Hope of Kera._ Commander Anamuri was awake despite the late hour—or early hour, depending on one’s point of view. She seemed almost to be expecting Coran’s call and asked him to meet her on the _Kera’s_ bridge.

The young Piraxan guard from the other day met Coran as he stepped out of his pod, introducing himself as Fi and offering to lead Coran to the bridge. Coran accepted graciously, if only because Fi seemed as nervous as he had when Coran had first woken up. Besides, Coran hadn’t yet been to the bridge, and it would be rude to show up unannounced. There were certain rules you just didn’t break, especially not in wartime.

When the bridge doors opened, Coran’s first thought was that Anamuri looked tired. There had been a certain amount of tension in her bones from the start, of course, as there would be on anyone fighting a near-impossible fight against the Galra, but it had eased somewhat since Hunk and Pidge succeeded in their mission of sabotage. The fact that it had returned spoke to the flavor of her thoughts.

“I take it you also detected that signal from Berlou,” he said, joining her by the displays at the center of the bridge. Anamuri had pulled up a map of the Faoril System, the second planet glowing faintly red.

Anamuri grimaced. “We have our own operatives in the area. The war has been heading that way for quite some time, and we helped them prepare.” Her long snout twitched once in a gesture Coran took for frustration. “We were on our way to provide aid when the _Executioner_ picked up our trail.”

“Ah.” Coran clasped his hands behind his back and studied the screens—most of them covered in what Coran could now identify as intelligence reports, many of them in code. The ones that were not painted a very grim picture. Two Galra warships already present, rumors of a third on the way. Cities under siege. Hostilities seemed to be centered on the capital of the largest nation, a city called Faus, but segments of the army were deployed all over the world, and the Berlua had suffered heavy casualties despite the their defenses. This was a fight in delicate balance, soon to be upended unless the resistance could arrive in time to change the tide.

“You called yourselves paladins of Voltron.” Anamuri kept her voice mild, her flat green eyes turned toward the screens. Coran allowed himself a moment to study her before responding. Much of the crew on-board the _Kera_ had been slow to believe Coran’s claims, but Hunk and Pidge had performed a minor miracle the day before, and that had won a lot of people over. They weren’t all convinced this Voltron was the same as the ten thousand-year-old legend, but it was something. Anamuri, Coran suspected, was not so cynical.

“We won’t abandon you,” he finally said.

Anamuri’s nose twitched. “I did not think you would.” There was a note of amusement to her tone, but her eyes fluttered briefly closed, relief making her shoulders sag. When you stood alone against impossible odds, it was difficult to make yourself believe in the kindness of strangers. It was a lesson Coran had learned many times over in King Alfor’s service. “Though I have to wonder if your wards would say the same.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, Coran couldn’t stop a grin. He _had_ adopted quite the menagerie of lost children, hadn’t he? And after he’d put up such a fuss over nannying a young Allura. Alfor always did have a knack for seeing things in people they couldn’t see themselves.

“I doubt they’d put up much of a fight,” Coran said. “They’re young and idealistic. They don’t believe in sacrifice.”

“May they never face that particular crisis of faith,” Anamuri muttered.

Coran held himself back from voicing his agreement. “In any case, they wouldn’t leave you any more than I would.”

“But they would feel guilty about ignoring the Berlua’s distress beacon.”

Much as Coran hated to admit it, Anamuri was right. Hunk was far too much a yellow paladin to turn his back on anyone in need, and Pidge would convince themself they could be in two places at once so long as it meant no one got hurt. “That’s why I don’t plan to tell them—at least not until we’ve handled the _Executioner_.”

“Spare them the guilt of choosing?” Anamuri asked, her smile as tired as Coran’s.

Still, he managed a small laugh. “Guilt? No, I’m just afraid they’d try to save both you and Berlou and leave us pinned between two Galra fleets. We’ll just have to hope Berlou can hold out a little longer.”

* * *

Things were awkward between Lance and Matt in the days following their arrival at the _Hive_. The lions took several days to recharge, and Matt spent most of that time locked inside Red, emerging infrequently for food and showers. Lance was tempted to fall into the same pattern of sulking, but after about two hours he decided there was way too much to check out on this weird floating chimera of a ship to waste it all with a pillow over his head wishing he had punk rock to blast through his speakers.

And, as it turned out, the _Hive_ was neat. Really _freaking_ neat. From the improvised fusion of dozens of different ships to the dozens of different species of alien living on board to the diverse spread of alien food. _Real_ alien food, not the castle-ship’s pathetic equivalent. Man, if Hunk were here to taste all of this—they’d never eat another bowl of bland green mush. Lance was almost sad to leave. Except for, y’know, the part where Hunk and the others were out there somewhere, alone, probably thinking Lance, Matt, and Allura were dead.

He hoped Hunk was holding up all right.

It was hard not to think about the other half of their team. Half of what Lance saw on the _Hive_ reminded him of them, from the alien food to the custom engines to the maintenance bots to the weird alien mannerisms. Even when he wasn’t actively reminded of them, Lance’s thoughts just kept sticking on the castle-ship, a constant, deflating awareness that kept him from really enjoying himself.

And of course, when he wasn’t thinking about Hunk, he was thinking about Matt. Okay, sure, the guy probably had a good reason for believing in Shiro. They’d been crew mates, they’d probably been friends before training, they’d spent some time together in a Galra prison. Lance knew that much, even if Matt refused to fill in any details. If someone had told Lance that Hunk had joined Zarkon’s army, he would have been just as adamant of his innocence.

The problem was he had a hard time justifying the alternative—that everyone accusing Shiro of defecting was lying. One person, sure, whatever. There were assholes out there, someone might get off on saying something like that. But three? He told himself it could be a misunderstanding, or even a lie the Galra were spreading on purpose. But why? _How_? If Shiro was free and fighting the Galra, why wasn’t anyone talking about the good he had done? If he was still a prisoner, or off in hiding somewhere, how could there be any substance to the rumors? _Someone_ had to be doing all the things they said Shiro was doing—and there were a lot of them. Lance hadn’t exactly gone looking for dirty laundry, but he’d found it anyway. Shiro had orchestrated the fall of Yaltin, he’d slaughtered dozens on Lan Trossa, he’d hunted down rebels and acted as Zarkon’s executioner of choice whenever the interrogators finished with a prisoner.

The more Lance thought about it—and he thought about it a _lot_ in those empty days—the less possible Matt’s happy ending looked. If the Galra had any inkling of Shiro’s skill as a fighter pilot, why _wouldn’t_ they try to turn him? Lance had seen those E-dep chambers. That kind of cruelty could break a prisoner, no question.

Ironically, it wasn’t Shiro’s defection that made Lance mad. That made sense, in a horrible sort of way. There was still a chance that Shiro was acting against his will, that Lance’s one-time hero could be saved.

No, what pissed Lance off was that Matt refused to even entertain the possibility that he might have to fight to get his friend back.

Whatever. He wasn’t going to let Matt ruin his mood for the fourth day running. There were too many aliens here to talk to (and flirt with) to waste time moping about stupid red paladins and their stupid blind faith in stupid former Garrison pilots and…

Lance let out a long, frustrated groan as he slumped down next to his plate of—well, he hesitated to call them nachos, because they weren’t really. At all. There was something crispy and vaguely flat smothered in sauce, but it tasted nothing like tortilla chips, cheese, or any other Earth food. It was good, though, and Lance was _trying_ to enjoy it. He’d entrenched himself in the _Hive’s_ lounge, surrounded by a ragtag assortment of locals, hoping the company would cheer him up.

Unfortunately, the handful of kids running around just made him think of Mateo and Luz, which only made him _more_ homesick than he already was, which reminded him that the two people he usually went to when he was feeling like this were off the table. Coran was probably billions of light-years away, and Matt might as well have been. It was just Lance, an elderly couple who liked teasing Lance about his, as they phrased it, ‘lame’ pickup lines, and a plate full of soggy alien nachos.

God, he missed Earth.

The radio was playing in the background somewhere, a steady trickle of depression. There’d been a few more reports about the latest victims of the Galra expansion. The nebulous ‘resistance’—it was never spelled out in any clearer terms than that—claimed to have visited Yaltin, where one of the front line Galra warships had stayed for barely a week.

If the early reports had been worrisome, the first-hand accounts were downright grim. What had once been a healthy, if isolated, planet was now a hunk of dead rock. No one knew what had happened, or at least if they did, they weren’t sharing. All Lance knew was that the fledgling Yaltian resistance had been wiped out, the planet gutted, and the people left for dead.

There had been no word of survivors.

Fortunately or otherwise, there had been no new word on Yaltin for a day and a half. The resistance broadcasts had moved on to other targets of the Galra’s terror. Zarkon was leaning harder on the Balmera under his control as more and more of them died off, a few worlds near the heart of the Empire were seeing a resurgence of military presence as rebellious activity set their oppressors on edge, and a new round of victims had been dragged to the figurative altar of Galra expansionism.

Forefront in everybody’s mind at the moment was Berlou. In the past few days, Lance had gathered a smattering of details. It was a densely populated, well-traveled world—or had been until the Galra invaded three months ago. Now it was under siege, its allies outside the Empire either unable to break through the blockade or unwilling to risk drawing Zarkon’s wrath. The resistance inside the Empire had been similarly unlucky, managing to send only a small number of agents to monitor the situation.

In the last few days, however, things had started changing. The warship that had last been on Yaltin had joined the Galra already on the ground on Berlou, and that right there was enough to put everyone on edge. Yaltin had been a tragedy, an estimated three-quarters of a million lives lost. Berlou was home to a thousand times that.

Lance hadn’t even heard the name Berlou before this week, but he was already sick with worry for the people who lived there. He was a paladin. He was supposed to stop things like this. He’d long since decided that there were few things worse than sitting on his hands while people suffered. The itch to get up, get out, get his hands dirty, was almost overwhelming. He needed to _do_ something. But the lions were still recharging, Matt was still brooding, and Allura spent every waking hour with the _Hive’s_ navigational computers, trying to figure out how to get them all back to the castle-ship.

There was a lot to do on the _Hive_ , of course, and Lance had tried it all, from checking engines to monitoring the sensors for signs of Galra scouts to making dinner for the hundred or so hungry mouths. Lance had even volunteered to scrub floors on more than one occasion, and nothing short of mind-flaying boredom could motivate him to do that.

On the bright side, he’d learned two new card games and some kind of dice-based gambling, and had won himself a small hoard of alien trinkets. The people who lived here had very little use for money, so it was reserved for spare parts and the new crystal everyone knew they would need to track down, sooner or later. Balmera crystals, as it turned out, were not quite an endless supply of power. On the _Hive_ , everyone had food to eat, tasks to complete, and a handful of personal belongings they traded among themselves. The children and those who were unable to help with manual labor made toys and jewelry and art out of scraps, and these became the de facto currency on-board the _Hive._

Lance was proud to say his gambling prowess had netted him three small paintings of alien landscapes, a hammered copper bracelet, and a rag doll Altean that was supposed to look like Allura but came out looking more like Lance’s grandmother.

Still, it was the thought that counted, and Lance would never stop reminding Allura of that fact, no matter how many times she told him to get the doll’s ugly mug out of her face.

With a heavy sigh, Lance folded his arms on the tabletop, rested his chin on top of them, and watched the glowing pattern of light moving through the vein-like Q-conduit on the far wall. They left it bare here, more out of a lack of metal casing than an aesthetic judgment, but Lance liked it. The way the light inside the conduit shifted, painting patterns on the wall like sunlight reflecting off water…

Just another day or two, Allura had said. The lions were almost done recharging, and Allura had entered into negotiations with the _Hive’s_ captain to open a wormhole back to the vicinity of Vel-17. Just another day or two and they’d be out of here, headed back toward the rest of the team, and ready to jump back into the war—for better or worse.

“ _In an emergency transmission, the Berlua requested immediate aid in their fight against the Galra._ _Resistance leaders remain tight-lipped on the possibility of sending aid, though we remind listeners of the Aintilian drought and the challenges that poses to resistance efforts throughout the Empire._ ”

Lance listened to the broadcast with an apathetic ear. He’d learned a little about the way the resistance worked in his days aboard the _Hive._ First of all, there wasn’t _a_ resistance. There were several, each working independently. It was anyone’s guess which resistance organized this broadcast, if any. The news came text-only and was translated by each ship’s computers into the local language of choice, and whoever wrote it was always careful to avoid giving specifics. The Galra weren’t supposed to know about the existence of this broadcast, but you didn’t survive long if you got stupid in your rebellion. They mostly reported on things after they’d happened, and deflected attention from ongoing operations—at least according to the other listeners cheerfully walking Lance through the broadcasts.

Take the ‘Aintilian drought,’ for example. Apparently _Aintilian_ was the name of a third-rate ship involved in a battle a decade earlier where a different resistance had gotten too loose-lipped about their plans and ended up getting caught in an ambush. “Remember the Aintilian drought” was the resistance’s way of saying, “Hey idiots, we can’t tell you what we’re up to cause Zarkon might be listening.” It was fascinating, really, even if trying to follow the in-jokes and code words gave Lance a headache.

“ _Like-minded organizations are encouraged to spare a private thought for the plight of Berlou tonight._ ” The broadcast went silent for a moment, and Lance expected it to return to the music and dramas that filled most of the air time—audio contraband smuggled off Galra-controlled worlds and broadcast as a sign of defiance. Instead, after five ticks or so, the automated announcer came back. “ _An interesting note_ _for history buffs out there. The Berlua transmission included what experts believe is a prayer to an ancient god named Voltron for deliverance. More on this as the story develops._ ”

If there was more to the broadcast, it was lost to a sudden rush of whispers. The word _Voltron_ had caught the attention of everyone in the room like a lighter dropped in a match factory, which was enough to tell Lance that, yes, these people were well aware of who and what Voltron was, even if they hadn’t brought it up since Allura introduced herself as a paladin. He could only assume that treating Voltron like a dead god was another of the resistance’s smokescreens. Rumors were spreading about Voltron’s return, but the resistance wanted it downplayed, at least until Voltron became a player on the main stage.

None of that mattered now. Berlou had asked for Voltron’s aid, and that was a better excuse than any to join the fray. Allura was as eager as Lance to get back to the good fight, but she was at least as concerned with getting back to the Castle of Lions. With this transmission, it wouldn’t be an either-or sort of thing. If Lance had heard this call for help, there was a good chance Coran had, too. The castle-ship might already be on its way to Berlou.

All the others had to do was meet them there.

Grinning his first real grin in days, Lance stood and went in search of Allura. He wouldn’t rest until they were on their way to the front lines.

* * *

The _Hope of Kera_ , despite being a ship on the run from the Galra army, was surprisingly well-equipped. They were especially well-stocked with broken and dismantled bits of machinery, shattered robots, and heaps upon heaps of scrap. Pidge supposed that was only to be expected. When you fought the Galra army, a lot of your stuff got banged up, and when you had only a handful of places you could go to restock, you learned to hold onto the broken stuff just in case you ever needed it down the line.

They’d had enough spare parts for Yellow’s cloaking device, and after the successful sabotage, Anamuri had given Pidge and Hunk the okay to take whatever they needed. For Hunk, that meant souping up the Yellow Lion’s existing systems—squeezing a little more juice out of the engine, upgrading the stabilizers, and adding on a little more armor on her head, since his go-to method of attack was to just ram stuff until it broke. (Hunk said Yellow liked his ‘scrappiness.’ Pidge thought Yellow just didn’t want to hurt his feelings.)

Pidge was going a little more ambitious. Why just make their lion faster or tougher when they could make her more versatile? Besides, there was no guarantee they’d get this chance again.

Since all the spare parts were already on board the _Kera_ , the two Voltron Lions had temporarily taken up residence on the cargo deck, squashed into the largest landing bay where their paladins could work on them. Hunk, currently, was back on the castle-ship sleeping, which was probably a good idea, since Anamuri was expecting the _Executioner_ to make its move sometime today. It had been three days since meeting the resistance, and in that time frame Pidge had accumulated less than eight hours of sleep. They _should_ have been sleeping.

They were smart enough to know that wasn’t going to happen. Not with battle creeping toward them. Not with Matt and the others still missing.

Pidge had spent an hour the day before digging through the scrap heaps in search of any long-range scanners they could use to help Green locate the other lions. The search had turned up nothing—though Pidge had at least given Green her own nav computer in case they had to leave to search on their own. They weren’t exactly _planning_ a solo rescue mission, but they hadn’t ruled it out. Once the _Kera_ was safe, then they’d evaluate their options.

Tonight, though, Pidge had a different project. Matt had made the Red Lion breathe fire, and Lance had figured out how to freeze enemies with Blue. Pidge had a sneaking suspicion each of the lions was capable of something similar, and that the paladins just had to prove their worth or get to the point where they really needed that extra _oomph_. Well, if there was ever a need, Pidge rationalized, it was going into battle with only two lions. And if they managed to mod a new ability into Green, wasn’t that basically the same thing as proving their worth? She was all about clever paladins, right? She ought to like what Pidge was trying.

Coran would probably have a heart attack if he realized Pidge had disassembled their bayard when they first got the idea to give the Green Lion lightning breath, which was why they’d done it in the darkest corner of the _Kera’s_ scrap heap. No need to make anyone worry over nothing. Besides, all they’d really done was pry off the casing and poke around at the internal workings.

They were disappointingly sparse.

It stood to reason that a super-advanced weapon that could turn into energy and change shape for its wielder would run more off magic than gears and wires, but that didn’t make the handful of crystals and a wire at the base of the metal blade any more satisfying. There was bound to be some kind of technology to it, something so advanced it _appeared_ to be magic, but it was for now far beyond Pidge’s grasp. No double-wielding for them; not for a long time.

That was fine. They could improvise. The bayard showed them how it converted Quintessence into electricity, and that was all they really needed. Once they found a large enough converter in the junkyard, they were set.

By the time they returned to the hangar, it was no longer empty. Pidge perked up a little at the sound of metal on metal. Hunk was the master engineer to Pidge’s genius programmer, and it would be helpful to bounce ideas off him as they tried to amplify the current into something they could weaponize without simply frying their lion.

“Morning, Hunk,” they called, crossing to where the lions rested side-by-side. “Sleep well?”

There was a clang, a grunt, and a muttered curse that didn’t sound very much like Hunk. Pidge’s footsteps slowed, and they dumped their spoils on a workbench so they could summon their bayard.

“Who’s there?”

“Sorry!” came the guilty reply. A moment later Jeya’s wedge-shaped, feathered head appeared over the Green Lion’s back. “I didn’t think anyone would be here this early.”

Pidge lowered their bayard, but didn’t dismiss it. They liked Jeya—at least, they thought they did. She was funny and smart and seemed to feed off Pidge’s sarcasm, but she’d also tricked them into an ambush. Pidge had heard the excuses. _I thought you were working for the Galra. I thought you knew where the Alteans were. We aren’t supposed to let anyone go if they know something about us or one of the other resistance movements._ They were all perfectly valid excuses, but she’d seemed sincere before the trick, and Pidge was having a hard time figuring out what was going on inside her head.

They scowled at Jeya as she edged away from the Green Lion, her hands twisting at the fabric of her dress. “What are you doing here? Were you messing with my lion?”

"No!” Jeya held up both clawed hands, eyes wide with guilt and alarm. “I wasn’t. Promise! I just—I saw you work the other day and I… You know. I wanted to see what sort of ship you’ve got buried under all that feline topsoil.”

Pidge’s scowl deepened. “The lions aren’t just _ships_.”

“I know!” Jeya was beaming, though her enthusiasm faltered a little at the sight of Pidge’s displeasure. “I know. That’s why I wanted to take a look. I… I used to help my mom fix up our ship. It wasn’t much—nothing like what you’ve got going on here. Just a small, quick little skipper that could get us from place to place. ‘Course, we added a few tricks in, just in case the Galra got too close.” She shrugged, scratching the shaggy feathers on the crown of her head. “Just...wanted to see if anything you’ve got might’ve helped, I guess.”

“Helped?”

The look on Jeya’s face—eyes drifting toward the door, tongue clicking nervously—said she didn’t want to talk about it. That was fine with Pidge. They knew as well as anyone that there were some things you just couldn’t put into words. Before they could say so, however, Jeya sucked in a deep breath, settled on her haunches against the wall, and waved Pidge over.

“You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to,” Pidge said even as they crossed to sit beside Jeya.

She shook her head. “It’s okay. I owe you after what happened on Wa’Resha.”

“Really, Jeya, you don’t--”

“I do.” Her shoulder’s tensed, and she stared hard at her claws, which picked idly at her skirt. “I just… I know I’m paranoid, okay? I can maybe convince myself I had a good reason to be suspicious when you were asking about Alteans, maybe, but that was the first five minutes, tops. Any other person, once they saw Coran, they would’ve come clean or—or—or at least told the soldiers waiting in the hotel that we could try talking before they jumped you.”

“That would’ve been nice, yeah,” Pidge said dryly, and cringed when Jeya buried her face in her hands. “Sorry. I’m sure you had a good reason.”

The words felt hollow, and Jeya’s answering laugh sounded bitter in the silence of the hangars. “I don’t know that it’s a _good_ reason, but… yeah.” She breathed in and let it out slow, the air whistling through her beak. “I guess you could say I was born into all this—the resistance and all that. My parents were part of another rebellion before this one, back before I was born, and it got my dad killed. Things went bad when I was a hatchling, so we ran. Me and Mom and some of her friends. We started stealing from the Galra. It was the only way we had to fight back. Lots of smugglers used to belong to one rebellion or another.”

Pidge leaned their head against the wall behind them, feeling restless. They were having a hard enough time coping with the whole Voltron thing, but at least they’d had a chance to be a kid back before the Kerberos mission disappeared. They couldn’t imagine growing up like Jeya had. “You must’ve been tough.”

“I guess.” Jeya didn’t look at Pidge, just pulled her shoulders higher and blinked a few times. “I didn’t really do much. Mom said I was too young. Mostly I helped Aunt Khal take care of the ship and manned the emergency gadgets.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow.

Jeya didn’t turn her head, but her eyes crinkled toward a smile. “Aunt Khal was good with machines, so she added a whole bunch of things to our ship. Shields, weapons, scramblers, bombs, drones. When things went bad, Mom would have me unload on the Galra, and we’d slip away while they were dealing with the mess. I’m not great with mods, but I helped as much as I could. Mostly that meant coming up with ideas for Aunt Khal, then watching so I’d know how they worked.”

She trailed off, staring at Green.

“About a year ago, we messed up. It was a big job—stealing crystals from the Galra. There were only five of us by then; the others had all died or left to try to make a life for themselves somewhere they didn’t have to run and fight every day. We probably shouldn’t have even tried it, but that’s just how things were. Better to die fighting than live in fear. I stayed on the ship while Mom and the others went in, but the guy who’d told us about the stash had set us up. The comms went out, and…I guess I just panicked. Started kicking up distractions like I always did when things went south, only… they weren’t pulling out. Mom and everyone else were captured. I probably would’ve been, too, except that the comms cleared long enough for Mom to tell me to run.”

Pidge swore, softly but emphatically. “No wonder you’re paranoid,” they said. It came out harsher than they’d meant it to, but Jeya just laughed.

“Yeah, I’m ten kinds of messed up. Found the _Kera_ and joined up as a mechanic, then got promoted to pilot because I’m one of the few people left who knows a thruster from a comm array. Half the time I have no clue what I’m doing. All I know is that the more options I have, the better chance I have of getting out alive. I’ve made a habit of checking out every fighter that comes through our doors.” She shrugged, attempting a smile. “I’d really rather not die, you know.”

“Me either.” If Jeya heard the muttered words, she didn’t respond, and Pidge felt a surge of empathy. They were just kids, really, Pidge and Jeya. Two kids who’d got tossed into a war and had to learn to swim before they drowned. They hadn’t asked for this, but Zarkon didn’t wait for kids to grow up. Pidge looked sideways at Jeya. “My family got captured, too. I got my brother back, but now he’s--” _dead_ “--missing again. I still don’t know where my dad is.”

Jeya’s claws wrapped around Pidge’s wrist, surprisingly warm and gentle. “I hope you find them.”

“You too,” Pidge said. “Wanna help me with Green? I was just about to start on another new mod.”

Jeya’s eyes lit up. “You don’t mind?”

Pidge glanced at Green, who rumbled as she woke up. They felt her attention turn to Jeya, and smiled at the syrupy-warm welcome the big cat extended to the stranger. “Nope. Neither does she. C’mon.”

Before they had a chance to dig in, a siren split the peace of the hangar.

Jeya’s feathers fluffed, her eyes going wide. “The Galra,” she whispered.

Swearing, Pidge scrambled toward Green’s head. “Guess the mod’ll have to wait,” they muttered, silently wishing Jeya luck as she turned and sprinted for the door. The resistance fighters were located in a series of hangars four decks above this one, and it would take several minutes for Jeya to get there. It would take several minutes for _anyone_ to get to their ships except Pidge, who had the questionable luck of being five feet away from their lion.

Green stretched and loped for the hangar door, rumbling in anticipation. “Hunk! Coran!” Pidge called over the comms. “You’d better be ready to fly, cause we’ve got company.”

* * *

Keith didn’t know how long it had been since he defected from the Galra army. One day? Two? It was easy to lose track of time when you never slowed down enough to sleep more than an hour or two at a time. However long it had been, it had been hectic, terrifying, and an _incredible_ relief. There were still Berlua who saw him and instantly recoiled, eyes going wide, hands reaching for weapons, but more and more they recognized him. Accepted him—ignored him, really, but that was better than the alternative.

He would have felt sick that this mixed bag of tenuous trust and overt suspicion was the most at home he’d ever felt if he weren’t so high on the sensation of freedom. There was no more need to fake a bloodlust he’d never felt. No need to hold himself back as he watched people get hurt. He still couldn’t save everyone, not by a long shot, but at least now he could take a stand.

Defection had been even kinder to Shiro, who walked with new energy, engaging with the leaders of the resistance, his gestures large and confident, his smiles—small and scarce though they were—freely given. It was like Keith was seeing a whole new side of the Champion he’d met in the Arena all those months ago. Haggar had wanted to turn him into a weapon, but all she’d done was push him to the edge of a dark abyss. Now that he’d found his footing on the other side, her weapon was out in strength and ready to lay waste to everything she’d built.

“Are you sure you want to save those charges?” Shiro asked, leaning over a holographic map of the battlefield. “It doesn’t do us any good to wait for the best moment if they’re using those ships against us in the meantime.”

“Our shields will hold,” said Kya placidly.

Nue nodded their agreement. “The Galra do not _need_ those ships. To lose them now would be a slap in the face. To lose them in the midst of a critical mission would be a far stronger blow.”

Keith scanned the map with a critical eye. He didn’t have Shiro’s head for strategy, but he knew Galra tactics better than anyone. He was half convinced that was the only reason he was allowed in the room right now. Kya and Nue hardly spared him a glance, but Shiro turned toward him now, silently asking for his opinion.

Scratching his neck, Keith considered the situation. During his and Shiro’s ‘blaze of glory,’ the Berlua had sneaked into the Galra camps and planted bombs. Keith didn’t know how many, or where. He hadn’t known they existed at all until today—though for once he doubted it had to do with him being Galra. The Berlua leaders kept their secrets well, and until now only the soldiers who had planted the bombs had known about them. “They could be right,” he said in an undertone. It wasn’t quite low enough to exclude the Berlua, but it was clear he meant the words for Shiro. “Right now there are only a few gunships giving us any real trouble, and they have plenty of spares. Unless they managed to get bombs on all the ships, it would be better to save that hit for when it’s most useful. Sooner or later, the Galra are going to lean on us hard. That’s the moment to kick their legs out from under them.”

Shiro nodded thoughtfully, then looked up at Kya and Nue. “All right. So then what’s our current target? I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re still against an aerial battle.”

“We have only a few dozen fighters,” Nue said. “Nowhere near enough to go up against the Galra. Better to--”

“Better the save them, I know.” Shiro sighed. “I still think Keith and I could do some real damage if you’d just give us each a ship.”

Kya reached out to lay a hand on Shiro’s arm. “You would make a good general if only you stopped acting like you have to do everything yourself.”

Keith couldn’t stop himself from wincing at the reprimand, gentle though it had been. The Berlua didn’t understand how much of _everything_ Shiro had been doing the last few weeks. When it was just the two of them, they hadn’t had a choice. If they didn’t do it themselves, it would happen. Simple as that. No one could blame Shiro for taking time to adjust to his new situation.

But to Keith’s surprise, Shiro didn’t flinch away from Kya’s words. Instead he stood taller, drawing in a long breath. “You’re right,” he said. “So what do we have at our disposal? Since that strike on the industrial district, we’ve got a limited supply of guns, but what about the wall cannons? Could we try to lure some of their ships out with ground raids, then shoot them down?”

Nue shook their head, but before they could say anything, the conference room door burst open and a younger Berlua stumbled in, stuttering their apologies.

“What is it?” Shiro asked, instantly on guard. “What’s happened?”

The Berlua swallowed, then gestured toward the wall. “Transmission,” they gasped. “The Galra sent a--” They faltered, but Kya didn’t wait for the rest of the sentence. They crossed to the comm panel on the wall and powered it on with an impatient snap of their wrist.

Dusan’s face filled the screen, his ears quivering with barely-contained rage.

“Attention Berlou,” he growled. Aside from his twitchy ears, he didn’t move at all. It might have been a hologram speaking for him for all the animation it showed, and Keith didn’t like it. Galra were not, as a general rule, this stoic, and whatever had the power to change that had to be big. “Twice now I have demanded the return of the two traitors you are harboring within your city walls. Twice you have defied me.”

Keith’s teeth clenched at the reminder. Nue and Kya had tried to keep Dusan’s demands secret from them at first, but neither he nor Shiro was naive enough to overlook the change in Dusan’s tactics. First it had been the hacking of the outer shield and subsequent bombing of the industrial district, which had destroyed most of the Berlua’s munitions. Several hundred workers had died in the blast, and in the short time it had taken to strengthen the security protocols protecting the shield generator, fully ten percent of the city had been leveled. Thankfully the areas not protected by the smaller internal shields had long since been evacuated, but there had been homes and businesses where now stood only rubble.

After that, Dusan had withdrawn the bulk of his troops, sending them around the countryside to raze the abandoned towns nearby.

It was retaliation, plain and simple, and the Berlua couldn’t pretend otherwise when Shiro had finally confronted them about it.

Keith’s insides were tying themselves in knots now as he watched Dusan’s face for signs of his next step. Two warnings, both ignored, and now a final message—he knew it was the final warning, though Dusan hadn’t said it outright. Galra weren’t used to being defied, and this had gone on long enough that Dusan had to be feeling the pressure to win. There were no stalemates in Zarkon’s army.

“I am feeling generous today, so I will allow you one more chance to obey. Deliver the human and the Galra to me, lower your shields, and lay down your weapons. Do this, and I will spare your miserable lives. You have six hours.”

Cold dread wormed its way down Keith’s throat, threatening to choke him. He shot a look at Shiro and found him equally tense.

“Check the long-range scanners,” Shiro said, his voice low, tight, and dangerously even.

Nue frowned at him, but Kya moved at once to do as he said.

“What is this?” Nue asked while Kya fiddled with the display, dismissing the final freeze-frame image of Dusan and calling up the scanners. “Do you know something?”

Shiro glanced helplessly at Keith. “I know that the last time a Galra prince issued a deadline, it ended with an entire planet dead.”

“They wouldn’t,” Keith hissed. “Haggar wants this planet alive. She wouldn’t...”

Shiro sighed, laying a hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith suspected Shiro knew he didn’t believe his own words. “I think right now the thought of _us_ free and fighting back means more than whatever resources this planet has to offer.”

The scanner feed came up as a string of tiny, flashing lights, and Shiro turned. The blockade was still where it had been—hundreds of fighters and a few larger gunships ringing the planet. A moment later another marker appeared, the soft red glow as loud as a photon cannon’s blast.

“Haggar,” Keith whispered, his voice turning her name into a curse. His heart pounded in his ears. “She’s here.”

"We have to turn ourselves in.” Shiro’s words were met with stunned silence on all sides, so he repeated himself, louder. “We have to turn ourselves over to Dusan. It’s the only way this doesn’t end with everyone dead.”

Keith grabbed Shiro’s arm, seizing the panic budding in his chest, clipping it, compacting it into anger instead of fear. “It’s too late for that, Shiro.”

“We still have six hours. Dusan said--”

“Dusan is trying to save face,” Keith said, maybe more harshly than Shiro deserved. The cold, inescapable reality of war was closing in around him. This was twice now they’d doomed a planet by their actions. He was starting to think they could have saved more lives staying back on the _Envoy_. “If Haggar’s already here, that means she’s made up her mind. Dusan just wants to be able to hand us over to her so he doesn’t end up in an even worse position than Orgul.”

Shiro paled, his eyes riveted to the display on the wall. He said nothing as Nue and Kya exchanged unreadable looks.

“If we cannot appease them,” said Nue slowly, “then we must defeat them.

Kya nodded. “This weapon you have spoken of. Can you destroy it?”

Shiro swallowed, and an unsettling calm swept over him. “We’re going to have to try.”

* * *

Pidge’s teeth rattled with a passing laser burst. It was a glancing blow, too weak to break through Green’s shields, but it still made her shudder, and that made Pidge tense up. The _Executioner_ hadn’t even joined the battle yet, and Pidge was already feeling overwhelmed. It was so different without the others here. The lions were impressive on their own, but there was something comforting about knowing they could form Voltron if things got rough. Without that, the battle’s outcome was still up in the air.

“There’s another squadron coming at you from below, Pidge,” Coran said, his voice calm despite the situation.

Pidge rolled away from the oncoming fighters, silently blessing Coran for his level-headedness. This fight would have been a lot tougher without him, and that was before they considered his well-placed lasers. A flash of yellow passed across Pidge’s viewscreen, and Hunk barreled through the cluster of fighters, smashing three to scrap metal and biting another clean in two. The rest scattered, and Pidge picked them off with the help of the mismatched resistance ships.

They spared a glance for the _Executioner_ , looming silent in the distance. “Why haven’t they attacked?”

“Maybe they’re scared.” Hunk’s voice was packed full of forced optimism, but Pidge knew him too well to think he believed it. “Now that they know two paladins of Voltron are here, they’re having second thoughts.”

“ _Or_ ,” Coran said, “they’re trying to call for backup.”

Hunk scoffed, then stopped himself. “ _Are_ they?”

Even tucked away in the corner of the viewscreen, Coran’s grin was impossible to miss. “I don’t think Anamuri has had this much fun in a long while.”

“Good for her,” Pidge said dryly, tucking Green into a barrel roll to avoid a spray of lasers from dead ahead. Did these Galra fighters seriously think they were going to win the day with party tricks like that? “But the _Executioner’s_ gonna realize something’s up sooner or later.”

“Indeed. That’s why you two need to get in there and finish her off.”

“Okay, wait, hold on just a second,” Hunk said. “Sabotage is one thing. Fighting these little shrimpy guys—no problem. But there’s a _huge_ difference between an easy little two-lion job and—and— _that_.”

Coran sniffed pointedly. “It’s not as though you’ll have to worry about the photon cannon.”

“No, just the fifty thousand _other_ guns. And the fighters. _And_ the pissed off and/or greedy Galra who will literally kill themselves if it means a itty-bitty little boost to their odds of capturing our lions.”

“Oh, pish.” Coran waved a hand. “I’d have thought you’d be used to all of that by now.”

Pidge couldn’t help but laugh. It was at least fifty percent nerves, but they were feeling good about this. Granted, they’d feel a whole lot better if they’d had time to install Green’s new lightning gun, but between Green and Yellow and the castle and the fifty or so resistance fighters, they were doing pretty good. “If we’re gonna do this, we’d better do it before I have time to think about how insane this all is.”

Hunk’s groan said he’d really rather wait for Pidge’s rational side to kick in, but he’d follow them anyway. He never left his friends to face these kinds of things on their own.

Pidge angled toward the _Executioner_ , waited two heartbeats for Hunk to do the same, then punched the engines. Their lasers cut down Galra fighters who got in the way, while Hunk simply flew through them, using Yellow’s new head armor to his advantage. They didn’t make it far; as soon as the fighters realized where the lions were heading, they closed ranks, forming a barrier of metal and lasers. Green was fast, but not fast enough to escape fully unscathed. Pidge grit their teeth and rode out the barrage, taking down the other ships one at a time. If they kept at it, a hole was sure to open up sooner or later.

A squadron of resistance ships dropped from above the Galra, another rising from below, catching the blockade between them.

“Don’t worry about these bozos,” Jeya called, her voice wavering with either fear or exhilaration. “We’ve got them.”

Hunk cheered and made a break for the thinnest part of the blockade. Pidge lingered a moment longer, trying to take down just a few more Galra fighters. However good the resistance pilots were, they were outnumbered four to one, and their ships weren’t that much better than the Galra’s. If Pidge could just even the odds a little…

Pidge was able to pick out Jeya’s ship in the melee—a sleek, bullet-shaped fuselage with what looked like Galra skulls painted in acid green on the swept-back wings—because she dipped her wing into a salute as she switched over to a private frequency.

“Hey. Greenie.” There was a grin to her voice, the kind of manufactured overconfidence Pidge had come to expect of Lance. “What’re you waiting for? Go on.”

Pidge glanced guiltily toward Hunk, who was tearing through the last line of defense between him and the warship. “You sure you have this handled?”

“Positive. I eat armies for breakfast.”

Pidge almost missed the ship angling towards Jeya’s tail. It was smaller, darker, and faster than most of the ships—the kind Pidge had only recently discovered was piloted by a living Galra instead of a sentry—and it was loaded down with a laser cannon that was way too big for it. It looked like a shark with a torpedo tube grafted to its dorsal fin, and by the time Pidge saw it, it already had Jeya in it’s sights.

“Jeya, look out!” they cried, putting on a burst of speed. There wasn’t time for Jeya to get clear, but the Green Lion was faster than any ordinary ship. By the time the cannon fired, they’d inserted themself between it and Jeya. They rolled a the last second, catching the laser on the shield melded into Green’s spine.

The cockpit shook from the force of the hit, the air shivered with Green’s roar. Pidge fully expected to blow a valve or twenty with the impact, but no alarms blared. In fact, the only sign that they’d been hit at all was a little green light on the control panel, glowing faintly. Pidge didn’t think they’d ever seen it light up before. They didn’t know if the change was a good thing or a sign of impending doom.

“Oh snarls. Pidge! Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Pidge said, more than a little surprised. They twisted, searching the area for the ship that had attacked them. They didn’t have to look far; it drifted in two pieces near Jeya’s ship. “You?”

Jeya warbled a laugh. “Super. Now get your tail over to your friend before I kick it for pulling a stunt like that.”

Grinning, Pidge took Jeya up on her suggestion. Hunk was getting swarmed anyway, and he could only headbutt so many Galra at once. “Right. Keep an eye open while I’m gone.”

“Only if you do,” Jeya said, then wheeled around and dove back into the battle. Pidge tried not to worry too much about her as they sunk their claws into the mob around Hunk. The _Executioner_ lay dead ahead, it’s photon cannon beginning to glow with an unsettling light.

“Uh, you _did_ disable that thing, right, Hunk?”

Hunk made a small, offended noise. “Of course I did! What do you take me for? Some sort of—craft store—amateur--”

Hunk didn’t have time to finish his indignant rant. The cannon had finished charging, and the _Executioner_ had angled itself so the mouth of the cannon was pointed straight at the Castle of Lions. In the next instant, the _Exectioner_ opened fire. And tore itself apart.

It wasn’t a death blow, but it was close. The energy pooled deep in the muzzle of the cannon, but instead of emerging as a single, concentrated beam, it began to leak out from all sides. Some rays spilled harmlessly into empty space; a few more took out Galra fighters that strayed too close to the mothership. Several of them—several _large_ beams of super-powered light—cut through the _Executioner itself_. Small explosions peppered the hull, and the light inside the cannon went suddenly and dramatically dark.

Hunk let out a relived cheer that undermined his earlier confidence, but Pidge was too busy laughing out their own tension to rib him about it.

“Oh, man,” Hunk said. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had a hand in.”

Pidge snorted, bottling up the last of their anxiety-fueled mirth. “Hey, Coran, can we make this our new Fourth of July tradition?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Coran said, “but sure. Now hush up for a second. I’m going to hail the _Executioner_.”

A few seconds of silence followed, and then a Galra appeared at the edge of Pidge’s screen. She had a short, wide face that reminded Pidge of a pug: fuzzy, wrinkled, and toeing the line between pathetically cute and ugly as hell. Once you considered the Galra fangs and angry yellow slits for eyes, though, she was leaps and bounds into ‘ugly as hell’ territory. She was also _pissed_ , and the handful of Galra visible in the background seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of making a break for it while her back was turned.

“Well, well,” she said, her voice as gravelly as Pidge would have expected from a face that had been stuffed through a meat tenderizer. “If it isn’t Voltron’s mascot. I’m flattered.”

Pidge snarled at the Galra woman. They didn’t know if Coran had left their channel open, or if they were on the receiving end only, but they were positive they would have ripped this hag a new one if there hadn’t been an entire warship between them.

Coran’s eye twitched, but otherwise he showed no reaction to the insult. “Commander… Maja, is it?” He smiled, tight-lipped and dangerous. “I’ll make this quick. I’m sure you have a wall to punch. Your cannon is useless, your ship is poked full of more holes than a Vermillion Puntuth, and your fleet is getting mauled. Surrender and we’ll let you live.”

The anger faded from Maja’s face. Eerie calm rose to replace it. She closed her eyes, lips quirking toward a smile. When she spoke, it was so soft Pidge almost missed her words.

“Victory or death.”

Maja cut the connection, and the _Executioner’s_ engines kicked into high gear. The ship began to move, slow to overcome its inertia but picking up speed.

“Quiznak,” Coran muttered. “She’s going to try to ram us. Pidge, Hunk, I need you to bring down her shields so I can disable her engines.”

“Right.” Pidge paused. “ _How_ are we supposed to do that? I don’t remember Sendak leaving his shield generators out where we could get to them.”

“Yeah, no,” said Hunk. “And we don’t have time to go through the inside.”

Suddenly Jeya’s ship darted between the lions, barreling toward the _Executioner_. “This way!” she called. “If you hit it just right with a strong enough laser, you can punch through the cargo hold and hit the shield generators from underneath.”

“You’ve done this before?” Pidge asked, incredulous.

Jeya hesitated. “We… planned for the possibility. Here, like this.”

She fired her lasers at a pair of hangar doors on the underbelly of the ship, where the shields were weaker. It didn’t do much, since Jeya’s fighter didn’t have heavy artillery, but Pidge could extrapolate. Jeya was right; with good aim, they could skim right underneath the shields to the mushroom-shaped generator near the bridge. There was just one problem.

“I don’t know if our lions have the _oomph_ to get through that much ship.”

Hunk positioned himself just above Jeya’s ship and lined up his shot. “We have to try.”

Pidge couldn’t argue with him there, so they joined him beneath the _Executioner_. The warship was moving faster now, and Pidge barked out a short countdown before they opened fire.

The kickback sent the Green Lion tumbling as Pidge fought with the controls, shaken and a little disoriented. _What_ _was_ that _?_ They checked their dashboard for signs of damage or malfunction, but everything seemed to be working fine.

“Dang, Pidge, you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Huh?”

“That laser,” Hunk said. “How’d you even _do_ that?”

Green righted herself, and Pidge finally got a clear look at the damage. The shot hadn’t punched all the way through the ship, but it had bit off a good chunk of the cargo bay, leaving a crater that glowed molten red at the edges. Jeya whistled appreciatively. “I have _really_ got to get myself a look at that tech of yours.”

Pidge was too stunned to answer. Had _they_ done all that? Galra warships weren’t soft. They’d barely managed to poke a little pinhole in the side of Sendak’s ship back on Arus. What had changed?

The Green Lion rumbled in the back of Pidge’s consciousness. She didn’t speak to them so much as nudge them. Hazy images floated to the surface—laser fire, a glowing green shield, the green light on the control panel. Green rumbled with pride as Pidge’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my _god_ ,” they breathed. “That’s _exactly_ what I need for lightning breath!”

“Lightning breath?” Coran asked. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” Pidge said. “Everything. Hunk, shoot your laser at my shield.”

“ _What_? No! I don’t care how happy it sounds, Pidge, friendly fire is a _bad_ thing.”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “No. I—Green can absorb the energy somehow. _That’s_ why my laser was so strong.” They twisted around, angling the shield on Green’s back toward Hunk. “Hurry up. I’m gonna need a killer charge if this is gonna work.”

Hunk let out a skeptical moan, high and keening. “I hope you know what you’re doing...”

He fired one short burst. The _Executioner_ plowed through the field of debris where the battle had taken place. The smaller ships had scattered, resistance pilots taking potshots at the warship, Galra falling back to watch the carnage. Coran had engaged the castle-ship’s thrusters, but it was as slow to move as the _Executioner_. He wasn’t going to get clear in time.

“More, Hunk!”

He fired again, still protesting without actual words, and when Pidge didn’t immediately die, he fired again, and again. Pidge gripped the controls hard enough to make their hands ache, holding Green steady so Hunk’s shots didn’t hit anything they weren’t supposed to. The small green light on the control panel lit up, glowing brighter with each shot. Pidge could feel the energy buzzing around them, building beneath their feet like a cat’s purr. They waited as long as they dared before they told Hunk to stop.

 _This had better work_ , they thought, lining up another shot.

The laser came out like a bolt of lighting as thick around as an arcade game, burning Pidge’s eyes and kicking Green back like a pool ball. Pidge didn’t actually see what happened, but Hunk’s cheer was encouraging. Blinking away dark spots, Pidge got Green back under control and turned around just in time to see the castle-ship’s main laser chew through the _Executioner’s_ engine. The warship lurched, forward momentum slowing as the ship began to twist.

A few seconds later, the engines went dark, leaving the warship drifting, dead.

Pidge slumped in their seat, grinning so wide it hurt.

“Great work, Green,” Coran said brightly. “We’ll clean up the last of the fighters out here. You and Hunk go get the prisoners.”

Pidge was only too happy to oblige.

* * *

“I hope you folks know what you’re doing,” the captain of the _Hive_ said over the comms as the patched-together wormhole generator primed itself.

Lance grinned his most charming grin—mostly for his own benefit, since the _Hive’s_ comms were audio-only. “No worries. We got this. What do you take us for, a bunch of wannabe heroes?”

“Lance, that’s exactly what we are,” Matt grumbled. He was still in a foul mood, but he’d cheered up considerably when Allura had informed them of their new plan. He’d muttered a grudging, possibly-coerced apology to Lance before they headed out, and Lance was doing his best to put things back to normal. They were all tired, stressed, and lonely, and fighting among themselves wasn’t going to solve anything.

So he laughed, letting his worries fade into the cold, dark backdrop of space. “Well, sure. But we’re a bunch of wannabe heroes with super-advanced techno-magic! We’re gonna knock those Galra chumps all the way back to…uh…the Galra homeworld. Galraland? Zarkonburg? Eau de Galra?”

“Lance,” Allura and Matt said in perfect unison. They did a fair impression of exasperation, but they couldn’t quite smother their amusement.

Lance smiled to himself and eased Blue out of the hangar. He wished the _Hive_ and her residents all the luck in the universe, but he couldn’t be happier to be leaving. Hunk, Pidge, and Coran could already be waiting for him on the other end of a wormhole. He’d blast his way through a thousand ships if he had to; five days away from his home-away-from-Earth was way more than enough in his book.

When the swirling blue portal finally appeared, Lance was the first inside, Allura and Matt close behind.

He emerged several long seconds later and instantly knew he was in the right place. If the distress beacon blaring through Blue’s control panel didn’t clue him in, the hundreds of Galra fighters certainly would have. Lance slapped blindly at the panel until it muted itself, then focused on the battle around him. He was already tail-deep in Galra, blasting them with ice and lasers as fast as Blue could charge them up. A few of the fighters were quick enough to return fire, but these were just the one-man (or, well, one-bot) fighters. They might as well have been mosquitoes nibbling away at the three lions for all the good their puny lasers did. Lance and the others chewed them up and left a cloud of spare parts behind.

There were gunships mixed in with the next wave, but fewer than a dozen. Zarkon couldn’t have intended this blockade to keep out more than a few lonely ships, which either said something about the state of rebellion in the universe or Zarkon’s overconfidence. Lance couldn’t have said which. True, there was one big ship—bigger than Sendak’s warship, for sure—hanging out near Berlou’s neighbor, but whoever it was didn’t seem to notice or care about the three lions. Maybe they didn’t have weapons. Strange for a Galra ship, but they couldn’t _all_ be floating death traps. Maybe that was the accounting ship.

Whatever the reason for the unimpressive blockade, it was pathetic next to a trio of Voltron Lions. They chewed up Galra ships like wounded gazelle, hardly slowing as they headed down toward the surface and the source of the distress beacon.

“There,” Allura said, taking the lead. “The Galra seem to be concentrated around that city.”

“They...aren’t attacking, though,” Lance said, tapping a button to magnify his view of the ground below. Two warships rested on some kind of funky-colored sand dunes a mile or so outside the city, surrounded by about half the fleet. The other half (minus what had been stationed in orbit) patrolled the skies in a wide radius. Smaller speeders roamed the ground, one or two of them engaged in small skirmishes with the locals. “I don’t think they’ve noticed us.”

Matt grunted his agreement. “That could change any time, though. Be careful.”

Rolling his eyes, Lance urged Blue into a dive. He didn’t see any signs of Hunk or Pidge, and the castle-ship was way too big to hide itself from this many Galra, so Lance had to assume they’d beat the others here. That was fine. With the Galra all grouped together like this, Lance figured the three of them could clean things up and have dinner waiting when their friends finally showed up to help. Happy reunion, great food, _and_ a chance to rub it in Pidge’s snarky little face. _Oh, Lance,_ they’d say, _you really_ are _a hero! I’m sorry I ever doubted you!_ It was win-win, really.

“Lance, watch your--”

Matt’s warning was lost to a sudden hail of laser fire. Lance yelped and twisted the controls hard to one side, spiraling out of the way of a proton cannon burst from one of the big warships.

“Lance!” Matt cried.

Lance grunted, looping around to come at the warship from another angle. The two of them had to be the priority, or those cannons would tear the lions apart. “I’m fine,” he grumbled.

From the irritated grunt on the comms, Matt was having some trouble of his own. “That’s not what I was worried about. What were you thinking charging in like that?”

“Hey, now. I--”

“Enough.” Allura’s voice was as cool as always, and it dialed in Lance’s indignation and nerves. He shot down a cluster of fighters before they could get off the ground. “We must focus, paladins. Split up, and try to take down those warships.”

Lance and Matt voiced their acknowledgment and split off without another word, which was just fine and dandy by Lance. How was this _his_ fault? It wasn’t like he’d done anything to catch the Galra’s eyes. All he’d done was try to get closer to the target before they opened fire. And anyway, Matt didn’t have any room for righteous indignation after his whole tantrum over Shiro. Just because Matt had been paired with the hotheaded lion didn’t give him a free pass on the reckless endangerment front.

Lance was so busy with his internal debate that he didn’t see the gunship coming up behind him until it was too late. The first shot disrupted Blue’s shields and the second, right on its tail, cut power to the main engine. Alarms blared in the cockpit as Lance fought for control. But it was no use. Blue listed to one side, then pitched down, her voice an ache deep in Lance’s spine.

He hit the ground hard, and the cockpit lights flickered out.

* * *

There wasn’t time for a plan. Not really. Dusan had given the Berlua a six hour deadline, but neither Keith nor Shiro wanted to test their luck. They had to get up to Haggar’s flagship and destroy or disable her superweapon as soon as possible.

The extent of their plan so far was to commandeer a Galra ship that would get them through Haggar’s shields. Keith didn’t doubt she would have more security up her sleeve, but there was no way to know what that might be and no time to stop and think. As soon as Keith and Shiro were geared up for a fight—dressed in their old Galra armor in an effort to at least momentarily confuse the Galra—they headed for the tunnels. Kya and Nue had mobilized as many resistance soldiers as they could on short notice and sent them out to soften up the perimeter.

By the time Keith and Shiro reached the edge of Dusan’s camp, two guard towers had already been brought down, and Berlua swarmed over the rubble into the camp proper. Keith tried not to think about how many corpses they passed on their way to the airfield. Too many, but far fewer than there would be if they didn’t get in the air and stop Haggar.

The patrols around the airfield were on high alert, so without pausing to discuss strategy Shiro and Keith split up, circling around in opposite directions to take out the guards.

Keith ran one guard through with his sword, then leaped back as her partner opened fire. There were very few places to hide out here, so Keith charged in again almost immediately, his sword whining at a skull-splitting pitch as it caught laser blasts. He swung, and the guard dodged back, firing again.

The rumble of a photon cannon shook the ground underfoot. Keith stumbled, but he recovered before his opponent and ran him through before he had a chance to retaliate. Only then did he turn toward the _Standard_ and try to figure out what it was shooting at. He would have expected the cannon to be aimed at the city, but it wasn’t. It fired again at open air.

No.

Something flashed in the sky, too far for Keith to see clearly. Reinforcements? His heart pounded in his chest, but there was no time to stop and stare. Friends of Berlou, enemies of the Galra, or Voltron itself—it made no difference if Keith couldn’t finish clearing the path to the ships. The damaged fighters and spare parts filled the first quarter of the airfield; Keith had at least two more patrols between him and an airworthy vessel. Whoever had come to Berlou’s aid would just have to fend for themself for the time being.

The two patrols he’d seen ahead joined forces to try to take Keith down, but he was on a mission and they weren’t used to shooting at other Galra. Keith used a heap of shattered hulls as a shield, closed the distance, and cut all four of the guards down in the time it took them to adjust their aim.

He spotted Shiro through the forest of Galra fighters, cybernetic arm glowing a brilliant violet as he cut down the last of his opponents. When the man had fallen, Shiro sprinted for the nearest ship. The cannon fire hadn’t slowed; instead, the thunder and lightning of smaller lasers had joined in, all of them aimed toward the sky. Galra soldiers were streaming toward the airfield, a siren blaring out over the camp to alert the army to the attack. Keith would have appreciated the distraction more if it didn’t mean trouble for him.

 _Time to go_. If they timed this right, their exit would be covered by the scramble of fighters joining the battle in the sky. Keith took off toward Shiro’s chosen ship.

He hadn’t made it ten steps before he stumbled to a halt, a vice closing around his chest. The world around him seemed to blur, time slowing as something warm and invisible brushed against the back of Keith’s neck. He shivered, whipping around to search the stone dunes beyond the airfield. He saw nothing, but he was certain something was there. He felt…

_Find me._

It wasn’t a voice that whispered in his ear, and it didn’t use words, but Keith understood what the strange sensation was trying to convey. He shot a look over his shoulder at Shiro’s fighter, its lights glowing in anticipation of a launch, its ramp still down to admit Keith.

Then he turned and ran away from the airfield.

He didn’t know where he was going, or what he would find when he go there, but something was calling to him. A voice. A presence. An… an energy of some kind, as foreign as it was familiar. Something—no, some _one_ was out there, and Keith needed to find them. It felt like the universe itself was depending on him.

It was crazy, of course. He should be running the other way, joining Shiro, taking down Haggar’s weapon. Berlou needed him.

He ran anyway. His head had steered him wrong before, stuffed full as it was of Zarkon’s wisdom. His instincts were far more reliable, and so he listened to his gut and ran. The ground ahead of him shifted and slithered before the wind, grit flying off the dunes’ crest like ash. But it turned solid under Keith’s feet. A firm path. A steady rhythm in his legs and in his chest, chasing him out into the wasteland. The perimeter wall rose up ahead of him, but whatever was calling him was inside the wall. He knew that without understanding _how_ he knew it.

He crested a particularly tall dune and stumbled to a stop, staring at the sight below him as the stone around his feet softened and slithered away. Keith didn’t give the unsteady footing a second thought, transfixed by the sight below him. An enormous, mechanical lion, easily twice the size of a Galra fighter, lay on its side in a crater. Fissures still ran through the stone around it, some of the stone turned to an odd, glassy substance. The rest had already begun to soften and fill the cracks, piling up against the lion like the tide rolling in.

_Voltron._

Keith was so transfixed by the sight he almost missed the figure crouched in the shadow of the beast’s jaws. It was the blue paladin—it had to be. That armor, that lion. There was no one else it could be. The Voltron paladins must have received the Berlua’s call for help, and they’d made it here just in time.

Keith had barely begun to relax when a laser blast streaked past his ear, superheating the air until it sizzled. The scent of ozone stung Keith’s nose, and he flinched away from the laser’s ghost, his brain lagging a few seconds behind the rest of him. The blue paladin fired a second shot, and this time when Keith moved to evade the attack, the softened stone underneath him gave way, dropping him like a sack of crystals into the Blue Lion’s crater.

Rolling over a painful lump of still-hardened stone, Keith came to a stop near the lion’s front paw. He saw the barrel of the blue paladin’s rifle staring straight at his head and lurched to his feet. His sword activated even as he scrambled back. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t know what to say. He was Galra, and that made him the enemy.

“Wait,” he said, breathlessness making the word soft. Lowering his sword took a considerable effort of will, but he needed to show the paladin he meant no harm. He raised his left hand in his best effort at a calming gesture. “Please, wait. I don’t want to fight you.”

The paladin snorted, sighting along his barrel. “Right. And I’m here for a good, hearty, all-American breakfast. Guess we’re both out of luck.” His finger tightened around the trigger.

Keith closed his eyes, braced for the pain that never came. Instead he heard a shout and the sizzling sound of a laser hitting raw Quintessence.

“Stop!”

Keith looked up to find Shiro standing over him, cybernetic hand raised to block the blue paladin’s lasers.

“Are you all right?” Shiro asked in a low voice.

“Yeah. Thanks for the save.”

The blue paladin’s stance wavered, his eyes darting from Shiro to Keith and back. It was difficult to read his face through his helmet, harder than it always was to judge intent, but Keith got the distinct impression Shiro’s arrival hadn’t diffused the situation.

“Shit,” the paladin whispered. Then again, louder. “ _Shit_! Allura!”

“Hold on,” Shiro said in his gentlest, most disarming voice. “It’s okay, we’re on your side.”

The paladin laughed, a ragged sound that set Keith’s teeth on end. “You know, I want to believe you. I really do.” Blue eyes flickered to Keith, hard and unwavering. “But you lose a little credibility once you pick a Galra over a human.” His lips pressed together into a thin line. “Allura, I need you down here. _Now._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back with the weekly reminder to check out the companion fic "Mama Holt's Army," which you can find on my profile or in the Voltron: Duality series. Two chapters down. This week features Akira Shirogane (the lesser-known twin)


	18. Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Berlou's distress beacon reached both halves of the separated Team Voltron, but it was Haggar with her superweapon who reached Berlou first. Shiro and Keith left the city to sabotage the weapon just as Lance, Matt, and Allura arrived to join the battle. Lance was shot down and encountered Keith, who had followed the Blue Lion's call to the crash site. Panicked at the sight of a Galra officer approaching his lion, Lance opened fire. Shiro shielded Keith and tried to talk to Lance--but after hearing rumors that the Champion had defected, Lance wasn't in the mood to listen.

“Allura, I need you down here. _Now._ ”

The Red Lion’s fire breath turned a pair of Galra fighters to slag, and Matt wheeled around, searching the sky for the Blue Lion. He found Allura quickly enough, picking off a swarm of fighters that looked like small, angry kittens next to the Black Lion’s bulk. Blue, though, was nowhere to be found.

Matt tried not to panic. Lance didn’t sound hurt, or even all that scared. His voice was low and cool and carefully controlled, a tone Matt had never heard from him. Maybe that was what had Matt’s mouth running dryer than the New Mexico desert.

“Lance, where are you?” Matt asked, already pulling up Red’s scanners. A flashing blue lion-head marker put Lance on the ground near the Galra encampment. There were enough fighters buzzing around Allura to keep her busy for a while, but Matt was near the edges of the dogfight. He dropped below the battle and took off toward Lance’s signal. “I’m on my way.”

“Wait, _what_?!”

Well, Matt thought, if Lance could still squawk like that, he couldn’t be in _too_ much trouble.

“I said _Allura_ , not--” Lance broke off, then groaned. “Listen, just… just stay out of this one, okay?”

It was too late to wonder what Lance meant by that. Matt had spotted the Blue Lion below him, lying on her side in a crater in the ground. A Galra fighter sat just outside the spiderwebbing cracks, seemingly unharmed. Matt’s heart leaped into his throat, and he approached at full speed, turning off the rational part of his mind that said he was being reckless. _Lance_ was down there. Alone. Nothing else mattered.

Stone cracked and metal groaned as the Red Lion touched down beside Blue. The ground shifted, the cockpit pitching sideways, and Matt, who had already made a dash for the ramp, was thrown against the wall. So far he’d mostly been able to ignore the ache in his bones, but it returned now, popping like firecrackers behind his eyes. Gritting his teeth, Matt pushed the pain back to the fringes of his awareness—no time for that now. Lance needed him. He summoned his bayard, resisting the urge to groan when it appeared as a sword, and staggered out onto the semi-solid stone.

He took in the scene at a glance: Lance standing just ahead of Matt and to his right, his gun drawn and aimed at the two figures in Galra armor standing halfway down the slope. Matt spared them the briefest of glances—just long enough to confirm that they weren’t _actively_ shooting at anyone—then looked Lance over for injuries. There wasn’t any blood, and Lance was standing upright, tense but unharmed.

“Lance,” Matt said, breathless. Lance flinched at the sound of his voice. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“...Matt?”

The air in Matt’s lungs turned to lead. The voice—that voice— _his_ voice _—_ rang in Matt’s ears, but his eyes were stuck on Lance. On the guilt and resignation written in every tense line of Lance’s body.

No.

He was hearing things. There was no way…

Slowly, Matt turned toward the man in Galra armor. There was a scar across his face, pale with age but raised and lumpy like the scar on Matt’s leg in a way that said it hadn’t been properly cared for. His right arm had been replaced with a metal prosthetic that glowed with the unhealthy violet light of a Galra crystal, though the glow faded as they stood gaping at each other. Behind him stood a Galra soldier. No, an _officer_ ; there was no mistaking the red emblem on his chest.

_The Champion fights for Zarkon._

“Matt, you… you’re _alive_.”

“Shiro.”

It was half sigh, half sob, a rush of air taking the only form Matt could manage in that moment. Shiro stood before him—not quite whole and not quite himself, but _here_. Matt opened his mouth, stepped forward, stopped, his sword hanging limp at his side. The voices of half a dozen strangers and his own nightmares held him back. It was Shiro, but he was shielding a Galra officer. Matt didn’t have a way to reconcile those two facts, so he stood frozen, unwilling to look away from Shiro but unable to ignore the evidence that said Brin and Rogi and the prisoners had been right after all.

The Galra shifted. Maybe it was just the stone liquifying under his feet, but the motion drew Matt’s eyes, and his stomach clenched.

 _This can’t be happening. This can’t be real._ (He defected.) _It’s Shiro. He wouldn’t have._ (He’s protecting a Galra.)

He was standing in open air, the sun on his face, but he was back in that Galra prison, his leg slick with blood, and Shiro was staring down at him. His memories warred with his nightmares, until he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t simply made up Shiro’s last words as a way to shield himself from the pain. _Take care of your father._

Matt blinked his vision clear and realized with a visceral horror beyond rational thought that the Galra wasn’t the only one who had moved. Beside Matt, Lance had gone rigid, bracing the butt of his rifle against his shoulder and sighting down it’s length. In the same moment, Shiro had placed himself more squarely in front of the Galra, face pale and slick with sweat. He didn’t waver, only reached back toward the Galra, who had grabbed Shiro’s shoulder.

“Shiro,” the Galra hissed. “You don’t have to--”

“Yes. I do.” Shiro closed his eyes. “Matt, I—God. I’m so sorry. I can explain, just--”

It was the crack in Shiro’s voice that broke the spell holding Matt in place. He didn’t care what he’d heard. He didn’t care that Shiro was dressed in Galra armor, using a Galra tech prosthetic, shielding a Galra officer. This was _Takashi_ , and he sounded just as lost and lonely as Matt. His bayard slipped through his fingers and vanished in a flash of light. Eyes prickling, throat too tight for words, Matt stepped between Lance and Shiro, grabbed the end of the gun, and pointed it straight at his own heart.

The stricken look on Lance’s face hit Matt like a punch, but he stood firm, sparing his teammate a small smile as Lance dismissed his bayard as quickly as though it had scalded him. “Matt, what are you doing?”

“I--” The world around Matt tilted on its axis, and he closed his eyes against the sudden vertigo. What _was_ he doing? The paladin in him said that maybe Lance had been right, maybe he should have just stayed away. But there was another part of Matt, louder and more insistent than the rest. He hadn’t thought there was anything left of Matt Holt the astronaut. Of Matt Holt, the five-year-old kid who’d plastered his bedroom with glow-in-the-dark stars, the student who’d laughed as he told his best friend about blowing up the chem lab and blushed when an upperclassman congratulated him on his engineering practical. The man who had stolen kisses from his pilot in the Garrison locker rooms and stayed up all night to watch meteor showers and promised his kid sibling to smuggle back a space rock—that man had died in the Galra prisons.

But it was that man who stood between his teammate and his—his what? There had been something between them back on Earth. They’d laughed and they’d kissed and they’d snuck around so Iverson didn’t realize what they were tumbling towards and pull Matt off the mission. They’d never put a name to it, though. Doing so during the mission had felt too risky, like just by saying the word they would make all the Garrison’s warnings come true. Arguments, friction, breakups, critical failure.

Now it was looking like Shiro might become his ex before he’d even really been his boyfriend.

“I can’t,” Matt whispered, because he had no other excuse. “I just—I can’t.”

Lance’s face was twisted with pain. His empty hands flexed, as though he was holding himself back from a fight with all his will. If he’d shoved Matt aside, summoned his bayard, and opened fire, Matt wouldn’t have been surprised. Two pairs of eyes prickled at Matt’s spine, an unwelcome reminder of the position he’d put himself in. If Shiro _had_ defected, if he and the Galra were waiting for reinforcements, or hoping to draw Allura down and catch all three paladins in an ambush, if Matt was wrong about Takashi, then he was already dead.

Licking his lips, Lance glanced over Matt’s shoulder. “Matt, buddy, look. I know you want him to be—I know you--” He swore. “He’s protecting one of _them_!”

"I don’t care!” Matt cried, because it was true. His head could argue caution until the heat death of the universe, and it wouldn’t make a difference. He had to believe the man standing ten feet behind him was still the man he knew and loved. He had to believe the good and right and precious things he remembered were still good and right and pure, or the tenuous foundation he’d been building for himself since his escape would crumble, dropping him back down into the dark, lonely places he’d left behind. “I don’t care, Lance.”

“But--”

“Have you even _asked_?” Matt spread his hands, anxious energy coursing through him like a power line. “Were you even going to give him a chance to explain himself before you killed him?”

Lance actually recoiled at Matt’s words, his face going slack like Matt had struck him. “I wasn’t going to shoot him!” he whined. “I’m not some sort of cold-blooded murderer. _God, Matt._ Glad you think so highly of me.”

There was real hurt in Lance’s eyes, hurt and fear and uncertainty, and it stopped Matt in his tracks. He’d forgotten just how young Lance was. A downed lion and a Galra officer were enough to put anyone on edge, let alone a seventeen-year-old kid trillions of miles from home. “Lance...”

“No—shut up. No. You don’t get to lecture me when you’ve got your backed turn on a goddamn _Galra_.” Lance flung an arm out to indicate the two figures standing behind Matt, but Matt’s eyes were on the thigh of Lance’s armor, where a series of lights had begun to glow, like Lance was preparing to summon his bayard. His hand, still empty, dropped heavily to his side, and he huffed. “And you still don’t care.”

Lance was wrong about that. The back of Matt’s neck hadn’t stopped itching since he’d stepped in front of Lance, something restless in his gut screaming _danger_ with every beat of his pounding heart. There was a Galra here, and every rational bone in his body said that was bad, that was wrong, that was inviting disaster. So why did it feel like Lance was the biggest threat here?

“He hasn’t killed me yet, has he?” Matt asked in a low voice, forcing a smile for Lance’s sake. “And he’s with Shiro. Maybe he’s on our side.”

The look of horror that came over Lance’s face was almost comical. “Tell me you don’t actually believe that. Please, _god_ , don’t—Matt. He’s _Galra_.”

Matt wished he could bring himself to argue. _So what?_ _Just because Zarkon’s a bastard doesn’t mean every Galra in the universe wants to murder us._

But he couldn’t. It was Shiro, and no one had attacked Matt, and there was no sign of an ambush. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Vel-17 and everything that had been done to him. This Galra was not one of them—Matt didn’t think he was one of them—Matt hoped he wasn’t one of them—but it didn’t matter. Maybe that made Matt a terrible person, but he couldn’t make himself believe that Lance was wrong. There was a Galra here, and Matt couldn’t turn off the voice that said that was the only proof that really mattered.

After another three seconds silently pleading with Lance to back off, during which Lance made no move either towards or away from Shiro and the Galra, Matt turned. If possible, seeing Shiro for a second time hit him even harder than the first. A cut on Shiro’s cheek welled with blood, and the shock of white hair stood out like an accusation. If Matt had been stronger, if he hadn’t needed Shiro to save him and send him away, would any of this have happened?

It took two tries to find his voice, and then Matt forced himself to ask the question he dreaded hearing the answer to. “Shiro… what happened?”

Shiro sucked in a quick, surprised breath. His eyes had gone wide and he stood rigid, and Matt suddenly realized he didn’t have the first clue what was going through Shiro’s head. Was it shock? Fear? Guilt? Shiro had changed in the last year, and Matt didn’t recognize this silent, wary stranger staring back at him. Shiro opened his mouth, but nothing came out, and Matt’s heart hit the floor.

Before Shiro could find the words to explain himself, before Lance could raise another objection, before Matt even knew where he came down in this confrontation, the Black Lion skimmed over the lip of the crater, Galra fighters on her tail. Her back end swung around, bringing her to a perfect stop overhead, and she dropped to the ground behind Shiro and the Galra, who spun with matching looks of shock—no. There was an edge of terror to the Galra’s expression that Matt couldn’t find on Shiro.

As soon as Black’s feet touched the ground she raised a shield large enough to encompass Blue, Red, and all four figures on the ground between them. The translucent barrier shimmered into being with a split second to spare as the fighters overhead opened fire. Matt staggered as the ground beneath him shuddered, stone shifting unpredictably between solid and nearly liquid. Up-slope, Shiro and the Galra faced similar trouble, and Shiro reached out to steady his companion. Matt couldn’t stop the hurt that shot through him. It was an ache without a name, something like betrayal, something like jealousy, and he swallowed a lump in his throat as Allura stepped out of her lion.

“Oh, thank _god_ ,” Lance breathed. “Allura! Maybe _you_ can talk some sense into Matt. He won’t listen to me.”

Allura surveyed the standoff, her eyes lingering for a long moment on the Galra, who stood frozen just a few feet away from her. Shiro squeezed his shoulder and took a half step toward Allura, whose gaze shifted to him and stuck, crackling with an intensity Matt couldn’t decipher.

Matt couldn’t seem to draw in enough air. “Allura, please,” he said, uncertain if she could even hear him. He felt like he should say something more, but he couldn’t seem to dredge up the words.

“I see.” Allura’s lips quirked into a smile, and, still looking at Shiro, she raised a hand toward Matt and Lance. “It’s all right, you two. They’re friends.”

“They’re _what_?”

Lance’s protests were as much white noise to Matt, who gaped at Allura, his legs going weak. She’d just—they were--

_Friends._

The word tugged at something inside Matt and he took one unsteady step forward as Allura made her way carefully down the shifting slope. She reached behind her and drew a dagger. Matt had seen her staring at it once or twice before, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. She was handy with her fists, but it made sense to carry a weapon in place of her missing bayard. Tensing, Shiro dragged the Galra behind him, standing between him and Allura, who only smiled, flipped the dagger around so she was holding it by the blade, and extended it toward the Galra.

“I believe this is yours,” Allura said. Shiro stilled and the Galra, yellow eyes widening, cautiously accepted the weapon from her. Somewhere behind Matt, Lance squawked in wordless indignation. The Galra stared down at the dagger, trance-like, and Allura smiled. “I didn’t have a chance to thank you before. For helping us with Sendak.”

“ _Sendak_?” Lance pushed Matt aside and stormed up the hill. The Galra tightened his grip on his knife, halting Lance’s advance. Lance glared at him. “There’s no way a Galra helped us with Sendak.”

“Oh?” Allura arched one eyebrow. “That dagger is of Galra make, and it was found onboard the castle-ship. It could be Sendak’s, I suppose, but it seems unlikely, especially when you stop to consider the fact that our mysterious helpers were somehow able to get through Sendak’s shields. Almost as though they already had the access codes.” She paused, looking like she wanted to say something more, but only turned to the Galra officer and smiled. “Am I wrong?”

He shook his head and slid the dagger into the sheath at the small of his back. An empty sheath, and one that perfectly fit the dagger. Matt’s legs wobbled on the edge of collapse.

“You’re _joking_.” Lance crossed his arms, eyebrow twitching. “There’s no way—we would have known—that’s not fair!”

The Galra groaned suddenly, a surprisingly human sound. “Wait a minute, I remember you. You’re the one who tried to pick a fight with me for no reason.” He shot Shiro a look that said, _These are your friends?_

“Pick a fight with—” Lance’s jaw dropped. “No way. No. _You_ were the one who—Oh my god! I should have known you were a Galra, you arrogant little... smart-mouthed jerk of a-a-a—jerkface! I _knew_ there was something fishy about you.”

“Fishy?” The Galra frowned, and Shiro gave him a weak smile.

A burning in Matt’s chest told him he’d been holding his breath, and he let it out in a shaky laugh. “Seriously?” he said, his voice high and thin. His head felt light, and he had to clutch his hands against his chest to keep them from shaking. Shiro was staring at him again, and Matt turned his gaze to Allura because he thought he might have broken down otherwise. “Are you seriously telling me that was _Shiro_? He was _there_? If I’d just stayed on the damn bridge five minutes longer, I would've--we could've--?”

He couldn’t finish the thought.

“I had no idea you were a paladin of Voltron.” Shiro’s voice was thick with emotion, and Matt couldn’t resist it’s draw. The smile on Shiro’s face—small, bittersweet, uncertain—made Matt’s breath stutter. “That’s amazing. I’m so happy for you, Matt.”

The last of Matt's reservations shattered then, and he threw himself at Shiro. A sound of surprise escaped Shiro before he recovered, wrapping his arms around Matt as the shifting stone and steep slope threatened to bring them both down.

And there it was: everything Matt had been missing for the last year. The Galra had left their mark on Shiro in more ways than one. He wore their armor. He looked older, more ragged, more weary, and the unforgiving metal of his right arm, an uncomfortable reminder of the creatures on Vel-17, sent a shiver down Matt’s spine. He looked too harsh, sounded too timid, moved too carefully, like he thought he might scare Matt away with one wrong move.

But he _felt_ right.

It was Matt’s nose in the crook of Shiro’s neck. It was Shiro’s arms around his waist, his fingers curling into his sides in a way that begged him to stay. It was late nights at the Garrison and family dinners at the Holts’ and coffee dates and quiet moments in the cockpit of the _Persephone_ watching the stars, Matt’s father busy in the lab where he could pretend not to notice the budding relationship that flew in the face of Garrison policy. It was every bright, warm, happy thing the Galra had stripped away when they dragged Shiro off to fight _._

“It’s good to see you,” Shiro said. His voice rumbled in Matt’s chest, a bass thrum that said _home, home, home._

Matt pulled back to study Shiro’s face. There were shadows under his eyes and lines around his mouth that Matt didn’t recognize… but it was Shiro. Matt’s vision blurred. _I found you. I finally found you._

He slid his hands around the back of Shiro’s neck and pulled him down into a kiss.

They couldn’t fit a year into one kiss, but that didn’t stop Matt from trying, fingers clinging for all the times the guards had dragged them apart, heart pounding for the terror of losing him that day in the Arena. Every inch of him remembered the darkness of Vel-17, the pain of their experiments, the guilt over abandoning Shiro to his fate. Matt tasted tears, and he didn’t know if they were his or Shiro’s. He didn’t want to think about the tears, though, or the pain, so he pulled Shiro closer, his teeth catching on Shiro’s dry, cracked lip. Always before their kisses had been soft and tender, lazy promises and hasty secrets, content in knowing they had time to figure out what they were together.

This kiss tasted of salt and desperation, fueled by adrenaline and a tangle of emotions that had festered for too long to be easily sorted out. Matt’s hand strayed from the bare skin at the nape of Shiro’s neck, ghosting over the short, soft hairs behind his ear. Shiro shivered, his fingers digging into Matt’s hips, hot on one side and icy cold on the other.

They broke apart when the need for air overcame the need for contact, breathing hard and staring into each other’s eyes. (Old eyes, Matt thought, then wondered if his were any different.) They’d both been crying, the tears leaving streaks through the grime on Shiro’s skin. Matt’s breath hitched on a sob. Behind them, Lance whispered, “Oh.” Then again, with a sly grin in his voice, “ _Oh_ _h_ _h_.”

Suddenly Matt was laughing, tearful, his face buried in Shiro’s chest, and Shiro was laughing into his hair, his breath hot on Matt’s ear. _God_ , Matt loved that laugh.

“I missed you, Takashi,” Matt breathed.

Shiro hugged him closer. “I missed you too.”

* * *

There was a lot of clean-up to do after the battle with the _Executioner_. Freed prisoners had to be taken care of, straggling Galra fighters dealt with, repairs undertaken—and of course there was still Commander Maja and her crew, alive and pissy, even if they were more or less helpless on the bridge of a dead warship.

There were people better equipped to deal with that mess than Pidge, though, so once the last of the fighters had been dealt with, they retreated to the castle-ship for repairs. The _Kera_ had more variety in their junkyard, but the castle had 3D printers to replace damaged sections of hull and diagnostic tools to make sure Pidge hadn’t broken anything on Green when they’d had Hunk power up their last laser. Revised plans for lightning breath churned in their head as they worked, and as soon as they had the diagnostics running, they took a shuttle over to the _Kera_ to grab the converters and the Faraday cage-like casing they’d found to protect Green’s electronics.

They’d barely settled into the pod back back on the castle-ship before Coran’s voice came on over the comms asking them to meet him on the bridge. Pidge groaned, but dropped their equipment in Green’s hangar and headed up to see what he wanted. Hunk was waiting with Coran when they arrived, though his innocent shrug said he didn’t know what this was about, either.

“Ah, Pidge. Excellent.” Coran turned away from his screens to study both paladins, an uncomfortably somber look in his eyes. “How are you both feeling?’

Pidge traded looks with Hunk. “Fine…?” Hunk said.

Pidge crossed their arms. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, you know...” It was obvious Coran was trying for levity, but he fell so far short he didn’t bother to finish his sentence. Instead he sighed and pressed a button on his console that brought up a transmission record. “The _Kera_ received a new distress beacon last night. The planet Berlou is under siege and has asked for help.”

“Seeking Voltron...?” Pidge read the short message again. “Is this for real?”

Coran nodded. “Anamuri is in contact with the Berlua. Communication has been difficult since the invasion began, but she was able to confirm that this was sent by the resistance there.”

“And you want us to go help?” Hunk asked, a slightly frantic note to his words. “Need I remind you that we can’t form Voltron without the others? We barely beat one warship. How are we gonna stop an entire invasion?”

“We have to try,” Coran said. “Besides! Anamuri and her fleet will be right behind us, just as soon as they finish dealing with the _Executioner_.”

Hunk looked like he was going to argue again, so Pidge stepped in. “We have to go. If the others caught wind of this distress beacon, they’ll follow it.” They paused to give Hunk a lopsided smile. “It’s better than wandering the universe hoping to get lucky.”

“That’s debatable,” Hunk said, but the fight had gone out of him. “All right. All right! Give me, like, an hour. Yellow took a beating out there, and I want to fix the worst of the damage before we get back into it.”

With a nod, Coran turned back to the display screens. “Right-o. Just let me know the second you’re finished. We’ve kept the people of Berlou waiting long enough as it is.”

* * *

Keith felt bad about interrupting Shiro’s reunion with his boyfriend, but the battle hadn’t stopped for their hushed conversation, and the blue paladin, Lance, was alternating between smiling at the back of Matt’s head and glaring daggers at Keith. Honestly, he could have rivaled Haggar for sheer malice. Keith kept Shiro between them and shot a wary glance at the Altean called Allura. She seemed every bit as happy for Matt as Lance was, except that her cheer didn’t dim when she caught Keith watching her. Keith cautiously smiled back, but his attention soon drifted back to the battle raging on and the approaching flagship beyond.

He vacillated momentarily, then cleared his throat.

Shiro pulled back from Matt (though he kept his left arm, his human arm, wrapped around Matt’s waist) and turned toward him, blinking. “Oh, uh, right. This is Keith. He’s the one who got me out of the Arena. Saved my life a few times since then, too.” Keith fidgeted under the weight of three stares—wide-eyed gaping from Matt, a frigid glare from Lance, and something unreadable from Allura.

“You…?” Matt trailed off, glanced at Shiro, who smiled. Keith knew him well enough by now to see how guarded his expression was, but when Matt turned back to Keith he wore a small smile. “Thank you, Keith.”

The gratitude was somehow even more uncomfortable than the scrutiny, and Keith felt his ears fold back. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected Shiro’s reunion with his old crew to go, but this certainly wasn’t it. It wasn’t bad, exactly, it just left him feeling untethered, drifting with no destination. Shouldn’t he be happy for Shiro? Even if they hadn’t talked about this since realizing they couldn’t search prisoner records, this had always been an unspoken goal. Keith had been anticipating this day, but it had still caught him off guard. Shiro’s smile faded, and Keith dropped his gaze. There would be time to work out how he was feeling after Berlou was safe. “Look, I don’t mean to interrupt, but we’re running out of time.” He gestured impatiently toward the sky.

Tensing, Shiro disentangled himself from Matt the rest of the way. “Shit. Keith’s right, we have to get moving.”

“Get moving?” Matt echoed. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Haggar’s here,” Shiro said. Then, like he’d suddenly remembered he wasn’t talking to Galra, he elaborated. “Zarkon’s second-in-command. She brought a weapon with her that will kill this whole planet if we don’t find a way to take it out.” He turned and started up the slope of the crater, the sand under his feet shivering with the continued aerial assault. He slipped once, then crested the lip of the crater, Keith a short distance behind him. The small shuttle Shiro had stolen from the airfield was parked on level ground nearby, just barely within the radius of the particle barrier put out by the Black Lion. Shiro breathed a small sigh of relief.

“Okay, okay, wait.” Lance raised his hands as he joined them with Allura and Matt. Lance gave Keith a conspicuously wide berth. “Giant death weapon, destroy it, save the day—I get that part. But, uh, _how_?” He flapped one hand at the sky. “There’s kinda an entire army up there, in case you didn’t notice.”

Keith resisted the urge to snap at him. “We noticed. That’s what the shuttle’s for.” He nodded toward the ship. “We’ll blend in with the Galra fleet, and the Berlua know not to shoot us down. We slip through Haggar’s shields and disable her superweapon.”

“Sounds risky,” Lance muttered. “You sure this is a good idea?”

Matt eyed him sidelong. “You’re just mad you didn’t come up with the plan.”

“How could I have, Matt, huh? I didn’t know there _was_ a superweapon until three seconds ago!”

Lips twitching, Shiro started toward the shuttle, turning so he was facing the paladins. “Keith’s right, though. We’re already behind schedule.”

Matt took two lurching steps forward and grabbed Shiro by the wrist. “I’m coming with you.”

Shiro froze. “Matt--”

“Don’t _Matt_ me, Shiro. I lost you once; I’m sure as _hell_ not watching you disappear again.”

Keith kept his mouth shut, sneaking a glance at Shiro. They hadn’t exactly discussed their exit strategy after sabotaging Haggar’s weapon. The fact that getting _to_ the flagship would be its own miracle went without saying. What mattered was saving Berlou. Keith and Shiro were ready to risk their lives for this chance—but that was before Matt had showed up.

Shiro jerked away from Matt, paling. “You can’t.”

“What?” Matt’s eyes widened, then narrowed to slits. “No, you know what? Screw you. You don’t get to play the martyr again. I’m coming.”

It didn’t take a genius to see that Shiro was on the verge of panic, but he wasn’t saying anything. What was there to say? Shiro _was_ playing the martyr, but he couldn’t back out any more than he could stomach Matt coming along. Huffing, Keith took pity on them. “You want Shiro to come back in one piece?” Keith asked, pretending not to notice the way Matt jumped at the sound of his voice. “Then we need you in your lion.”

“But--”

“No,” he snapped. It was rude, but there wasn’t time for delicacy. “There’s gonna come a point when the Galra realize where we’re heading, and they’re gonna swarm us. If we’re going to make it to Haggar’s ship—not to mention get out again—we’re going to need all the cover fire we can get. The Berlua will do what they can, but our odds will be better with Voltron at our back.”

Matt hesitated. “I… All right.” He closed his eyes, tensing all over, and jabbed Shiro in the shoulder with his finger. “But if you get yourself killed I’m going to resurrect your consciousness as an android so I can murder you myself.”

Laughing, Shiro raised three fingers on his right hand. “Scout’s honor, Dr. Frankenstein.”

Matt made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob, pressed a kiss to Shiro’s lips, then sprinted for his lion. Allura wished them luck before following, but Lance lingered a moment longer, shooting nervous glances at Shiro.

“Hey, uh, Shiro?”

“Hm?”

Lance picked at a long, shallow scratch on his armor. “I just wanted to say sorry. For, y’know, almost shooting you.” The dirty look he shot at Keith made it clear this apology was meant for Shiro alone. Bristling, Keith drifted back toward the shuttle. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just—I—”

Shiro quieted him with a hand on his shoulder. “You wanted to protect your team,” he said with a small smile. “I can respect that.”

Something hot and restless kindled in Keith’s chest, and he turned on his heel, the tail end of the conversation chasing him up the ramp.

“So we’re cool?”

“Yeah. You’re a good kid, Lance. I’m glad Matt has you on his team.”

“Cool. Cause, uh, you were kinda my hero back at the Garrison.” Lance laughed self-consciously, the sound grating on Keith’s nerves. “Not exactly the first impression I was hoping for, but uh… Well. Good luck up there.”

“You too.”

When Shiro came up the ramp a few seconds later, his face told Keith his hasty exit had not gone unnoticed. Great. That was exactly what they needed now: an interrogation. Before it could begin, Keith forced a smile. “So… Dr. Frankenstein?”

Shiro stopped at the top of the ramp, blinking, then chuckled. The sound seemed to surprise him, and he ran a hand through his hair as he took a seat in the copilot’s chair. “Old nickname,” he said. “Frankenstein’s this character from a book. A scientist who creates a person from dead bodies.”

“ _What?_ ” Keith shot Shiro a look of horror that made him laugh again. “How is this funny?!”

“Sorry,” Shiro waved one hand and hastily started running the pre-flight checks. “Sorry, you’re right. The story’s been retold so many times on Earth that it’s kind of lost its edge. It's just a name at this point. It’s—back at the Garrison, everyone had a job, like pilot or engineer, but they also had an academic concentration, like physics, or biology. The biomechancial engineers—like Matt—built things out of living tissue, so everyone called their projects frankensteins. Matt’s a—I don’t want to say pedantic little shit, but it’s the truth.” He grinned, and Keith realized they’d never really talked about Shiro’s old crew before. Not like this. Not without a heavy cloud of fear and guilt hanging over the conversation. “It always bugged him that people called the creation Frankenstein when that was the scientist’s name, so...” Finishing the last check, Shiro leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “I had to tease him about it.”

He looked so happy, so… _relaxed_ , that Keith couldn’t do anything but nod. It was like he was only now meeting the real Takashi Shirogane, like the last four months he’d been living with a second-rate impersonation. It hurt Keith as much as it made him happy, and he knew that, whatever else happened today, Shiro had to make it off Haggar’s ship. Keith could at least give him that much.

“Shiro, Keith, are you ready?” Allura asked over the comms.

Keith gave Shiro a look he hoped adequately summed up his feeling for human entertainment—and didn’t give away the rest of his thoughts—and took the controls. “Ready when you are.”

“On my mark.”

The second the shield dropped Keith was airborne. The shuttle wasn’t as quick as the enemy, but it was maneuverable enough. Keith had learned to pilot in a ship like this, so it was like getting back to his roots. His shitty, junkyard-ready roots. The Voltron Lions split off from Keith as soon as they cleared the crater, diving back into the fray to take the heat off the shuttle and give Keith a chance to get lost in the chaos. The shuttles had great shields, but only rudimentary weapons, and Shiro had said they should hold off on shooting until their ploy was discovered. Just because they could take a few hits didn’t mean they had to tempt fate.

They were almost clear of the atmosphere before the Galra noticed anything was wrong.

The first shot clipped Keith’s wing, but the shields held, and Keith neatly dodged the two that followed. They were pulling away from the planet-side battle, but there were several dozen fighters and gunships waiting in orbit, a deadly barrier between Keith and Haggar. She hadn’t dropped into orbit yet, which was a good sign, even if it made getting there more difficult. But they weren’t yet halfway there before they were swarmed. The faster, more agile fighters hemmed them in on all sides. The lions broke away from the battle below to provide some relief, but the lasers flew so thick Keith couldn’t quite manage to evade them all. He grunted, bracing his feet against the floor as the ship lurched.

“Shiro!” Matt demanded. “Are you okay? Maybe you shouldn’t--”

“We’re fine,” Shiro grunted, opening fire with the shuttle’s main laser. “Just a little longer.”

The words were barely out of Shiro’s mouth when Keith’s controls locked up. Thrusters, steering, navigation, even comms. It was like someone had shut the whole system down. Keith’s eyes locked on Haggar’s flagship, quiet and unassuming in the distance, but he didn’t have long to wonder how she’d taken control. Two lasers hit the shuttle in quick succession, tearing through the weakened shields. The ship shuddered, spinning through the air as gravity caught up with them. Wind howled through the cockpit, unaccompanied by the usual klaxon of alarms.

Keith swore under his breath and fought with the controls, but nothing was working right. The ground below flashed in and out of sight, a confusion of colors through the viewscreen. Keith’s stomach heaved.

The next lurch had enough force behind it that Keith thought the ship was being torn apart. His restraints tightened around his body, saving him from smashing against the console—and then the lurching stopped. The viewscreens showed nothing but open sky and a battle raging above them. They were impossibly, inexplicably, hovering steady in midair, slightly crooked but otherwise okay.

“Shiro! Are you okay? _Shiro!_ ”

Matt’s shouts broke the silence in the cockpit, and Keith spun toward the back of the ship. The comms were still down; Matt’s voice had come from _inside_ the shuttle.

After a moment of shock, Shiro struggled out of his restraints and picked his way through the debris toward the voice. “Matt?”

Keith could hear Matt’s sigh of relief over the tick of cooling metal and the howl of wind through innumerable breaches in the hull. Cursing Haggar, he tore at his restraints until he broke free, but he paused before following Shiro out of the cockpit.

The shuttle was ruined, and with it their plan to slip onto Haggar’s flagship. But-- Keith dropped to his hands and knees, then rolled onto his back, staring up at the underside of the console. The security codes were stored in the ship’s computers—not that Keith had anything to copy the information to. That would have been smart, in retrospect, but they hadn’t anticipated the need for a second run. When Keith had left Faus, he’d assumed that failure would mean death, so it wouldn’t make a difference if they were able to make a copy of the codes.

Things had changed, though, so Keith ripped out the hard drive, tucked it in his pocket, then followed the voices to the middle of the ship, which was now the _back_ of the ship. The entire tail section was simply gone, and in its place was the Red Lion, its teeth sunk into the shuttle’s hull. The cargo bay no longer existed, but the airlock between it and the rest of the ship remained, a metal door seven feet in diameter that filled the bulk of the Red Lion’s mouth so only a thin crescent of open space remained at the top. Matt stood atop the airlock door, one hand holding onto a handle behind the Red Lion’s teeth, the other gripping Shiro around the wrist. Together they managed to haul Shiro up and over the door into the lion’s mouth.

Matt turned back toward Keith. He flinched and Keith, ears pinned against his skull at the itch of that unfriendly gaze, started searching for a way up. The way the shuttle had turned, Keith was walking on one wall, and one corner of the crescent-shaped opening dipped down, forming a point at about chest height. If Keith could get a foothold there, he would be able to make it the rest of the way over. In theory.

In practice, getting his foot wedged in the gap was the easy part. At that angle had had no leverage; he’d have to pull himself halfway up before the foothold would do him any good. Of course, there _were_ no handholds aside from the ragged edge of the door. Keith had resigned himself to bloody palms when Matt thrust his hand down toward him. Keith looked up, dumbfounded.

“You’ll never get up on your own,” Matt said, his voice carefully neutral. “Let me help.”

Keith hesitated for a moment, picking up on Matt’s reservations. (Not that he was being subtle about it; he wouldn’t look at Keith and he tensed when Keith finally grabbed his hand.) But Keith wasn’t so proud as to turn down an offer of help, however grudging it may be. Matt leaned backwards, using his weight as a counter-balance to lift Keith up, and soon he was perched on top of the airlock door beside Matt, Shiro smiling up at them from his position on the floor inside the Red Lion.

Matt and Keith dropped down beside Shiro at the same moment. The angry rumble that greeted them almost knocked Keith off his feet. It felt impossibly loud, rattling in Keith’s chest and popping his ears, but Shiro stood up, still grinning, as though he hadn’t heard anything.

_What…?_

Keith glanced around for the source of the noise, but all he found was Matt, staring back at him, eyes narrowed.

Noticing Keith’s attention, Matt shook himself, then waved them up the ramp to the cockpit, where Matt settled in at the controls. The lion released the shuttle, which fell away like a discarded wrapper, silently shrinking in the corner of the viewscreen.

“Thanks for the save,” Shiro said, gripping the back of Matt’s seat as Matt dove back into the fray. Keith remained a few steps behind them, steadying himself with an overhead handhold. He felt like an intruder in the lion, the very machinery giving off a hostile vibe. Shiro, of course, was oblivious, too busy leaning over Matt’s shoulder, grinning like a kid on his birthday. “When’d you learn to fly?”

“About the time I realized I might have to come save you from the Galra,” Matt said. His tone said it was a joke, but Keith still felt it like a knife to his chest. _You_ _don’t belong here._

Keith felt a pressure on the top of his head and looked up to find Matt watching him around the side of his chair. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Matt turned his attention back to the viewscreen. “Just my luck you found a Galra to rescue you before I had a chance to save the day.” He gave a dramatic sigh and put his lion into a spin, narrowly avoiding a barrage of lasers. “You always did pick up the weirdest friends.”

“What, like you?” Shiro teased.

Matt laughed. “If you think _I’m_ the strange one in this relationship, Takashi, then it’s been longer than I thought. Have you already forgotten about your weird-ass pre-mission rituals?”

“Stretches!” Shiro argued. “Those are stretches!”

“That you do while quoting Star Trek. Shiro, babe, no offense, but you’re a total nerd.”

“ _I’m_ not the one who got all giddy over ice samples on Kerberos because it might contain evidence of ‘aliens.’” Shiro lifted his hands and curled his first two fingers toward his palm. “You can’t see me, but I’m doing air quotes.”

Matt let go of the controls long enough to smack Shiro’s hands. “Go ahead and laugh, smart guy. We were _totally_ right about that one.”

“Matt, we’re pulling out,” Allura said, and the silence that followed killed the mood in the Red Lion—or at least the mood between Shiro and Matt. Keith was already feeling nauseous. “We need a new strategy. Fall back toward the city.”

“Hang on.” Shiro leaned forward, pointing at something on Matt’s dashboard. “We can get into Faus from there.”

“Right. Lance, Allura, follow me.”

* * *

Allura lingered inside the Black Lion after they touched down near the unremarkable cluster of stone ridges Shiro claimed hid tunnels into the city. It wasn’t that she disbelieved him, it was just that—well, no. She couldn’t even say she disliked him. He seemed like a nice enough man, and he had obviously put himself at great risk in the name of fighting Zarkon and defending the people of Berlou. And he certainly made Matt happy; that alone was reason to forgive him of any perceived wrong-doing.

The fault, she knew, was entirely her own.

 _I should have been expecting this_ , she thought, letting her hand trail over the back of the pilot’s seat as she turned and headed for the ramp. _I told myself from the very beginning--_ But then, knowing something and believing it were two very different things, and Allura had let herself believe something she knew was not true.

The others were waiting for her outside the lions, Shiro and Matt standing very close together and speaking easily with Lance, who occasionally spared a glare for Keith. The young Galra lingered near the stone outcropping, the lines of his body tense, his eyes down-turned. As Allura emerged, he muttered something just on the edge of hearing and turned away from the lions. “It’s this way,” he said.

“Just a moment.” Allura’s words came out steady and clear—enough so to make her old tutors proud. _A princess must never let her people see her doubts._ The other four stopped and turned, though Keith did so with a considerable amount of wariness. Allura squared her shoulders, her head held high. “Before we leave, I would like to verify something. Shiro, would you come here for a moment?”

Shiro stood up a little taller, obviously surprised to be addressed. Keith tensed still further, his hand falling to the sword at his side. Allura would have tried to reassure him, but she didn’t trust her acting skills quite that much. Matt threaded his fingers through Shiro’s and followed him forward, giving Allura a suspicious frown.

“What’s up?” Matt asked.

Allura turned toward the Black Lion, smile bittersweet as Black lowered her head toward the approaching couple. She heard Matt draw in a sharp breath, but Shiro remained oblivious. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Allura said, closing her eyes for just a moment before turning back to Shiro with a smile. “Let me see your hand.”

Shiro glanced at Matt before complying. He held out his right hand, as Matt was currently clutching the other in both hands, a look of shock on his face. Allura wondered briefly if the Galra tech arm would interfere with the process at all, then caught herself hoping that it would so she would have an excuse to call her experiment a failure. She banished the thought. A princess wasn’t that petty, even if she had come to love her role as temporary pilot of the Black Lion.

Holding her breath, Allura drew Shiro closer to the Black Lion, then lifted his hand and laid it against Black’s nose. A question began to form on Shiro’s lips, but it died in the next instant. The lion’s eyes glowed a brilliant amber, the light reflected in Shiro’s wide pupils. A purr began in the corner of Allura’s mind—as well as Shiro’s, if his soft gasp was anything to go by—before building into a roar that rattled the ground underneath them. Red and Blue climbed to their feet and roared in return. The combined noise of it was almost deafening, and Keith staggered in his haste to back away from the lions. Whether it was the noise or the indication of sentience that had startled him, Allura couldn’t say, but Shiro was nearly as shocked, gaping openly at Black as she towered over him, her quiet pleasure soothing some of Allura’s pain.

She’d known from the second she landed in the crater that Shiro was something special. Black had awoken at his proximity, her anticipation palpable in their bond. Her silent roar had only confirmed what Allura already knew. She should have said something at once, but she’d been shocked and hurt, and she’d wanted to fly with the Black Lion one last time.

She tried not to resent the fact that Black had chosen someone else.

“Wh-what is this?” Shiro asked. He hadn’t moved since Allura placed his hand on Black’s nose, though he was now blinking rapidly, as though grit from this planet’s stone had lodged itself in his eyes. “What just…?”

“The Black Lion has chosen you, Shiro,” Allura said in the very brightest tone she could manage. It wouldn’t do to let the others see that her heart was breaking. “You are her paladin now.”

Keith’s sound of dismay was so soft Allura doubted any of the humans heard it. As Lance all but skipped forward to congratulate Shiro, Allura met Keith’s eyes across the distance. He hastily turned away, but not fast enough to hide his expression, a grimace of envy and self-doubt. Allura’s heart went out to him. It seemed they would have a great many things to talk about—but not yet. There were more important matters to be dealt with at the moment than a couple of bruised egos and a selfish princess’s wishful thinking.

“We need to get going,” Keith said gruffly, striking out once more toward the hidden entrance to the city. Shiro sent the Black Lion one last, awed look before taking off after him, dragging Matt behind him. Lance followed, and Allura brought up the rear, her gracious mask slipping the instant the others’ backs were turned.

 _You have no claim to her,_ she told herself, firmly. _This was always meant to be a temporary solution. The royal line does not produce paladins of Voltron._

They reached the tunnel entrance quickly enough, leaving behind three lions encased in their strongest shields. Allura didn’t like leaving them out here with so many Galra in the area, even if Keith had promised the Berlua would hold the enemy at bay. She wouldn’t have stood for it if there had been any way to get the lions into the city without leaving Faus open to attack, but the resistance leaders didn’t trust their encryption enough to send access codes over the comms. Keith found a hidden switch in the stone, opening a well-concealed panel just large enough for a person to pass through. A ladder stretched down into the darkness. Keith went first, then Shiro. Matt waved for Lance to go next, but he stopped Allura before she could follow.

“What was that?” Matt demanded. He spoke softly, as though he didn’t want the others to overhear, but his words were laced with venom and there was no mistaking the anger on his face.

Allura was taken aback and could form no more eloquent response than, “What?”

“ _That_.” Matt gestured back towards the lions. “With Shiro and the Black Lion. What the hell, Allura?”

She was touched at his concern—truly she was. They’d grown close as a team over the past month, and it was comforting to know that it all had meant something to someone other than Allura herself. But Matt couldn’t know that. He _had_ to accept Shiro as the new head of Voltron if they were going to stand any chance against Zarkon. “Shiro is the black paladin. It’s as simple as that. I would have thought you would be happy for him.”

Matt’s breath hissed through his teeth, and his expression darkened. “This isn’t about Shiro. You’re as much a paladin as he is. Why are you acting like you’re leaving the team?”

“I’m not leaving the team,” she said coolly. “Merely stepping back into the role I was meant to fill.”

“You were _meant_ to be the black paladin.”

Allura clenched her fists, the only outward sign of anger she permitted herself. “You’re wrong.”

Matt turned to pace the bare rock, tugging off his helmet so he could run his fingers through his sweaty hair. It had grown some since Pidge had cut it, clinging to Matt’s neck and hanging over his eyes. Perhaps she should suggest he find another barber soon. “I’ve flown with you, Allura. We trained together. Hell, we formed _Voltron_ together. How can you pretend none of that mattered?”

“I’m not saying it didn’t matter.” Allura itched to follow Matt’s lead and begin pacing, but she forced herself to stand still, hands on her hips, burning a sliver of Quintessence to stretch her height. She was already a few finger-widths taller than Matt, but the extra height couldn’t hurt. “But that was done as a temporary measure. I told you when all this began—the royal line has a bond with the lions that allows us to pilot them in an emergency. I never intended to continue after we found her true paladin.” _Liar,_ hissed a voice in her mind. Allura ignored it.

Matt whirled toward her. “The _true_ paladin?”

“Yes. I never bonded with my lion--” _She’s not_ your _lion though, is she? She’s Shiro’s lion. She always was._ “I never bonded with the Black Lion the way a paladin should.”

“Bullshit.”

“Matt? Allura?” Lance’s voice drifted up to them through the tunnel’s entrance, making Allura jump. “You coming, guys?”

Allura dusted off her armor—anything so she didn’t have to look Matt in the eye. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re coming.” Turning back to Matt, she smiled. “This is war, Matt. I’m touched that you trust me—truly I am—but I have to do what’s best for everyone, and that means letting Shiro take his place as paladin.”

“Now?” Matt asked. Some of the anger had faded from his voice, and he looked drained. “He’s never piloted a lion before.”

“Neither had you, the first time you fought the Galra. Didn’t you say Shiro was the pilot on your mission from Earth?”

Matt grumbled something under his breath, and Allura’s smile softened. “I don’t see why you can’t both be the black paladin.”

Laughing, Allura set her foot on the top rung of the ladder. “A happy thought, but I’m afraid that’s not the way it works. Don’t worry, Matt. I’ll still help you all in whatever way I can. Actually, it’s probably for the best. The castle-ship was always meant to have a much larger crew. I’m sure Coran will be glad for the help.”

“Assuming we ever find them again,” Matt said, sighing heavily.

Allura reached the bottom of the ladder and helped Matt down the rest of the way. His limp hadn’t ever fully gone away since Vel-17, though he refused to acknowledge it. He gave her an exasperated look now, and she crossed her arms. “Don’t look at me like that, paladin. I’m still a princess, and I can still make you run drills.”

Matt rolled his eyes as he reached out to accept Shiro’s outstretched hand. “Oh, good. At least I can sleep easy knowing the universe’s toughest drill sergeant is still breathing down my neck.” Allura laughed, and Matt offered her a small smile. “I’m gonna hold you to that, you know. Can’t go changing _everything_ on us without any warning.”

Matt’s smile made something warm take root in Allura’s chest. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

* * *

As soon as they reached Faus, Kya and Nue gave them clearance codes for the city’s shields—simple enough things, but Shiro understood why they wouldn’t want to risk the Galra intercepting them. Matt and Allura took it in stride, as well, though Lance complained about having to walk all the way back to the lions. He didn’t seem to care that the journey took less than ten minutes. Maybe it was the principle of the matter.

Allura insisted that Shiro pilot the Black Lion into the city so he could familiarize himself with the controls, assuring him that Matt could show him how it worked. Matt grinned at that, digging an elbow into Shiro’s side.

“Would you look that that?” he said, clapping a hand to his cheek in mock horror. “The world-famous pilot Takashi Shirogane has to take flying lessons from a lowly engineer. What would Iverson say?” He clicked his tongue, shook his head, and dragged Shiro back toward the tunnel.

Shiro sped up to pass him, blessing his longer legs, and innocently trailed his hand across the small of Matt’s back below his armor, where he wore only a thin skintight suit. Matt shivered, swore, and picked up his pace to punch Shiro’s arm. “Jerk,” he muttered, but his eyes were bright and his lips quirked upward, and Shiro found himself smiling without having to think about it first.

Lance groaned and pushed past them, muttering about PDA and sappy Harlequin romances come to life. Shiro’s face heated up, but Matt only laughed and ruffled Lance’s hair as he passed, earning a squawk and a glare as Lance rushed to fix his hair.

Ten minutes later they reached the lions. Shiro had noticed Matt favoring his left leg, but Matt had gone cold when Shiro tried to bring it up. Then again, what did Shiro expect? They both knew what Shiro had done, and the fact that he’d been trying to spare Matt a worse fate was bitter comfort. If Shiro had known then how poorly the Galra treated wounded prisoners, he never would have done what he did. Honestly, Matt was lucky he hadn’t lost the leg entirely.

The atmosphere had turned stagnant by the time Shiro walked into the Black Lion’s cockpit, the rumbling in the back of his mind strange, yet oddly comforting. Matt followed him up the ramp while Lance went to the Blue Lion. “Let me know when you’re ready to go, I guess,” Lance said over the comms, then cut the connection. Shiro didn’t want to know what Lance assumed was going to happen in the Black Lion, and he pointedly did not look at Matt as he settled in at the controls.

Shiro recognized very little of what he saw. The throttle and steering were easy enough to identify, but everything else was...well, alien. All spacecraft were complicated, whether human or Galra, so it wasn’t the complexity of the controls that overwhelmed Shiro, more so the fact that nothing was labeled, not even in an alien language. Cautiously, Shiro ran his hands over the console—and, curiously, he felt as though he almost _knew_ what everything was for. He couldn’t have put it into words, but whenever his fingers brushed a switch or dial or keyboard, there was a flash of something, some insight in the dark recesses of his mind where the Black Lion’s voice resided.

“I don’t know that I really need to teach you anything,” Matt said, draping himself over the back of Shiro’s chair. They’d both removed their helmets, and Matt’s hair brushed Shiro’s cheek as he stretched out a hand and pointed at one of the display screens. “That shows you engine status and other diagnostics, but honestly it’s easier to just listen to the lion.”

“...Listen?”

Matt laughed, then cut himself off with a quick glance at Shiro. “It’s hard to explain, and it’s kinda weird at first, but the lions are a little bit… sentient? I mean, everything I know about flying Red I picked up from her, and you’ve got _way_ more experience with actually flying than me, so...” He paused, pulling back, and Shiro immediately missed the warmth of him. “Maybe I should just go.”

“Wait.” Shiro turned, and Matt stopped, staring expectantly at Shiro. He wanted so badly to say something that would express even a fraction of what he was feeling. It had been a year since they’d seen each other, nearly eighteen months since they’d been alone. (For all Commander Holt tried to give them space aboard the _Persephone_ , Shiro had never been able to shake the feeling that someone might walk in on them at any moment.) He wanted to hold Matt, wanted to talk to him, wanted to make up for everything he’d done wrong.

Instead, he panicked.

“What does this do?” Shiro asked, and pointed to a button at random.

Matt was silent for a moment, and Shiro kept his eyes forward, too busy berating himself to deal with Matt’s annoyance or disappointment or frustration or…

“Those are the comm controls,” Matt said, standing once more at Shiro’s side—closer this time. More _beside_ the chair than behind it. The heat Shiro felt was probably all in his head, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier to focus on Matt’s words. “The lions default to a semi-private frequency that includes the other lions, the comms in our armor, and the castle ship, but you can switch to a private channel or an open frequency if you need to.”

Shiro nodded, swallowing. “And this?”

“Settings for the visual display. Here.” Matt leaned forward, flipping each switch in turn so the outside view switched from a normal display to infrared to something Shiro didn’t recognize that seemed to highlight air currents and the shifting of the stone sand underneath them. Because the switches were so far away, Matt had to lean heavily on Shiro’s shoulder to reach them, his free hand resting on Shiro’s knee for balance. Shiro tried not to think about that, tried to focus on the controls, searching for something else to ask about to prolong this moment alone with Matt.

Then he saw the devious smirk on Matt’s face, which he was doing a terrible job of concealing, and Shiro gave up on pretenses.

He wrapped his arms around Matt and pulled him down on top of him, stomach fluttering as Matt let out a laugh. It was a pure sound, airy and genuine, and Shiro felt something inside him thaw. Matt squirmed on Shiro’s lap, his legs sticking out over the arm of the chair, his body twisted awkwardly as a result of Shiro’s ungraceful tug. Shiro would have apologized, but he wasn’t sorry. He’d missed this. He’d missed _them_ . Matt had never been shy about his affections, and Shiro was starved for human contact, and they were _here_ , and they were _alone_ , and the reality of the situation hit him anew.

Matt was alive. Matt was happy. Matt somehow, impossibly, didn’t hate Shiro for everything he’d done.

There was no comfortable way to sit two grown men on a single chair. They were both wearing armor, and Matt wouldn’t stop squirming when all Shiro wanted to do was hold him. Eventually, Matt managed to twist enough to reach Shiro’s lips. They kissed, and when Matt pulled away Shiro saw burnished gold in his eyes. (Human eyes, with pupil and iris and sclera, like nothing Shiro had seen for the better part of a year.)

“I should show you the stabilizers,” Matt said, distracted, but Shiro only kissed him again, his fingers curling in Matt’s hair. “It’s really important,” Matt said, leaning his forehead against Shiro’s, their lips brushing as Matt spoke.

“I’ll figure it out eventually,” Shiro said.

Matt’s hand was hot and calloused and _real_ against Shiro’s cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of Shiro’s lips. “You’re making it very hard to teach you how to fly, you know.”

“Good.” Smiling, Shiro pulled Matt closer. “That was the intent.”

* * *

Keith held himself together until Shiro and the other paladins disappeared down the tunnel, then slumped against the wall, rubbing at his eyes in an attempt to stave off a budding headache. He was glad to see Shiro smiling—really smiling, loose and brilliant in a way Keith had never seen before—but he couldn’t help the voice of doubt tickling at his ears with whispers of _you don’t belong here_ and _he’s a paladin now; he doesn’t need you_.

With the humans gone, Allura dove into strategy talks with Nue and Kya. Keith lingered near their table, feeling even less welcome than when it had been Shiro in Allura’s place. After a few awkward minutes, Keith slipped away, making his way through the network of catacombs in search of somewhere quiet to think. He hadn’t stopped to remember that there _was_ nowhere quiet in Faus these days. The city’s population had been consolidated into the dozen or so neighborhoods with secondary shields, then driven underground by the near-constant air raids. Even if lasers and explosives couldn’t get through the shields, the impacts were occasionally enough to destabilize city structures, and no one wanted casualties from collapsed bell towers or dislodged ornamentation.

There simply wasn’t enough room in the catacombs for all these people, and Keith grew increasingly claustrophobic as he shoved his way through the crowd. There were too many people here, too many of them shying away from the Galra in their midst. Keith didn’t know which was worse: the hot, sweaty press of bodies that came with a cacophony of voices and the overpowering stench of a people denied basic sanitation—or the people who shied away and the stares that skewered him with the ill-wishes of an entire species. An entire _universe_ , maybe.

He found himself headed toward the hangar where Nue had cleared space for the three lions. With luck, Keith would catch Shiro as he arrived. There was no ‘and then’ to the thought. Shiro wouldn’t be able to create space in the catacombs any more than Keith could, and his presence had already proved ineffectual for warding off malicious stares.

Even so, Keith felt safer when he was near Shiro, who after all had the distinction of being the only person in existence who actually trusted Keith.

It was just Keith’s luck that the person he ran into outside the hangar was not Shiro, but Lance. Lance was shorter and leaner than Shiro, but the ice in his blue gaze could have frozen Keith’s blood in his veins.

“Hey,” Keith said, aiming for casual but falling somewhere between defensiveness and open aggression.

Lance’s expression soured. “What are you doing here?”

Keith faltered. He and Lance had started off on the wrong foot; Keith couldn’t deny that fact, but Lance had made no further protests about Keith’s presence once Allura had vouched for him. Keith had thought—erroneously, it would seem—that Lance’s silence meant he had decided to give Keith a chance. “Why do _you_ care?”

“Are you serious right now?” Lance snorted a laugh and crossed his arms. His posture was relaxed, but his sharp grin told a different story. “Dude, you’re a _Galra_. Everyone in this city probably cares where you are and what you’re doing there. Or have you somehow forgotten the literal army out there that looks just like you?”

Anger ignited in Keith’s chest and he stepped toward Lance, snarling. “I’m trying to help, you know. I get that you’ve had bad experiences with Zarkon’s army, but I’m not like them.”

“Right.” The corner of Lance’s lip twitched upward. “Look, you may have Allura fooled, but not me. I’m onto you. You make _one_ wrong move—just one—and you’ll be out on your ass in the snow.”

“Yeah? Well good luck with that. It doesn’t snow on Berlou.”

Something twitched in Lance’s expression. He took two steps forward and shoved Keith back against the wall. Lance’s fingers dug painfully into Keith’s shoulder, and Keith scowled through the pain, unwilling to give Lance the satisfaction of making him squirm. Lance leaned forward until they were inches apart before he spoke.

“You hurt my team, and I _will_ kill you.”

Keith knew it wasn’t an empty threat. There was no hesitation in Lance’s voice, no give to the hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith shrank away from Lance, who smirked and backed off, pointing two fingers at his own eyes, then turning them on Keith.

Then Lance was gone, and Keith was left shaking, leaning against the wall as he tried to get his pulse under control. A few Berlua scurried past, but none of them stopped to ask the Galra if he was all right. Some of them had probably witnessed the exchanged. Some had probably been glad to see someone finally stand up to their unwelcome visitor.

There were a lot of ways Keith could react to that uncomfortable truth, and none of them seemed particularly pleasant, so he gathered up every ragged scrap of emotion scattered across the battlefield of his new life and fed them to his simmering anger. His steps were quick and clipped as he stalked into the hangar and found the three lions sitting inside their spherical shields. He slowed, eyes lingering on the Red Lion, who sat in the middle of the lineup, glaring straight at Keith.

_Great. Even the robot lion hates me._

Aside from the lions, the hangar was blissfully empty, so Keith stalked to a stack of crates in the back, across from the lions, settled down where no one would notice him, and studied the Red Lion. It—she?--was smaller than the other two by a considerable margin, which Keith hadn’t expected. He’d always assumed the Voltron Lions were essentially the same, just like any other set of machines built for a common purpose. But the lions were all unique, and not just in size. Their faces were different, too, though Keith had trouble putting his finger on how, exactly.

The main difference, of course, was the fact that the Blue and Black Lions didn’t seem to notice Keith’s presence, or care. Red wouldn’t stop staring at him. But the more she stared, the less it felt like she was trying to chase him off. More like she was… watching. Waiting.

What she was waiting _for_ , Keith had no idea. ( _It_ wasn’t waiting for anything; _it_ was a machine.)

“So you felt it too.”

Keith almost jumped out of his skin at the voice, dangerously close to his ear. He spun, shrinking away from the figure sitting above him on the crates. The way his heart was racing, it took him a moment to recognize Matt, and when he did, he instinctively looked around for Shiro.

“He’s not here,” Matt said. “Shiro, I mean. I assume that’s who you’re looking for? He wanted to talk to Allura about their lion.”

Matt made no move to descend from his perch or summon a weapon, so Keith forced himself to relax, though he used the pretense of turning to face the human to put a little more distance between them. Matt frowned, but didn’t comment. Keith glanced toward the door to the tunnels, licking his lips. “ _Their_ lion?”

“Mm.” Matt’s frown became something more like a pout as he studied his lion. “Allura seems to think something like this is impossible.”

He didn’t elaborate on the thought, and Keith almost let it go. Then something made the fur on the back of his neck stand on his end, and he didn’t have to turn to know it was the Red Lion—which was of course absurd. It was just a robot. It was nothing. It couldn’t…

Matt was staring at him now, his gaze uncomfortably intense. Keith turned his attention to a label affixed to the side of a crate, the words written in Berluan script. He couldn’t read it, of course, but pretending to puzzle it out was better than meeting Matt’s gaze. He seemed to expect something of Keith, and Keith had no idea what it was. _Why are you here? Did Shiro tell you to talk to me?_

“What do you mean?” Keith finally asked. Then, because he’d let the silence stretch too long, he clarified: “You said Allura thought ‘this’ was impossible… What’s _this_?”

“Two red paladins.”

Keith whipped his head around, his heart leaping into his throat. “What… what did you say?”

Matt still regarded him with that same look. Guarded, intense. It was the same way the Red Lion look at him, and now finally Keith knew what it was. They were sizing him up. Judging him, just like every other Galra prince did back in Zarkon’s army. _You claim to be one of us,_ that look said. _Prove it._ “I said, you’re the red paladin—one of them, anyway.”

“No, I’m not.” The words left Keith in a panicked rush, fear lending them a dagger’s edge, and Matt flinched. _He’s afraid of me_ , Keith realized. It wasn’t surprising; Shiro had said they were captured together. Even without knowing where Matt had been sent after Shiro entered the Arena, it was easy enough to see the shape of his story. He’d had a year to learn to fear and hate the Galra. If there was anyone out there who had a right to distrust Keith, it was him.

But Matt was undaunted. “You felt it,” he said. “I know you did. Back inside Red, as soon as your feet touched the ramp. She responded to you.” Matt cocked his head to one side, putting one foot up on the crate he sat on and hugging his knee to his chest. “I know you heard her; I saw you flinch. I felt it, too. I don’t know why, or how, but we’re linked, you and me.”

“But I’m a Galra.”

Matt cringed at the words, averting his gaze. Keith swallowed down a fresh swell of bitterness and waited for Matt to get to the point. He didn’t know if Matt was going to threaten him the way Lance had, or if he simply wanted Keith gone, but there had to be something more to this than lying about Keith being a paladin. There was no way that was ever happening, no matter how much Keith wanted it.

“You are a Galra,” Matt said, in a tone very much like the one Shiro used when he thought Keith was being stupid. “A Galra traitor—no, no. That’s a good thing,” he added before Keith could either defend himself or make a break for the door. “Look, if you don’t believe me, go ask Red.”

“What?”

Matt nodded toward the lions behind Keith. “You saw how the Black Lion responded to Shiro. If I’m right, then Red will do the same thing for you. _Well..._ ” Matt hesitated, scratching his chin. “She can be temperamental. Didn’t so much as sniff at me until I’d almost gotten myself killed trying to fight a couple dozen Galr—uh, sorry.”

“For what?”

Fidgeting, Matt avoided Keith’s look. “For—you know. Because you’re…” He scratched his ear. “Never mind. Point is, Red can be a little bratty, and she makes you prove yourself before she’ll bond with you. So, uh, have you ever done anything impulsive, reckless, and potentially suicidal?”

Keith arched an eyebrow. “I betrayed my entire species for a prisoner I barely knew,” he said flatly. “Does that count?”

Matt blinked at him, a blank look on his face, then burst out laughing, rocking backward on his perch until Keith started to worry he was going to tip right off the back. “Guess there’s no reason to be jealous Red responded to you right away, is there?” He wiped at his eye, still grinning, and gestured Keith toward the Red Lion. “Go on. See for yourself.”

Keith almost gave it a shot. He barely knew the paladins, but they moved with a sense of familiarity, a comfortable cohesion, like they’d known each other all their lives, when Keith knew that was patently untrue. They were something more than just a team, and Keith ached to know what it felt like. Belonging. As he climbed to his feet, he let himself imagine for a second a world in which he stood beside the paladins, not a straggler they allowed because Shiro vouched for him, but someone they knew and trusted.

 _You hurt my team, and I_ will _kill you._

Keith stopped, his fingertips hovering just short of the Red Lion’s shield. He snatched his hand back, feeling like an idiot. Even if the Red Lion wanted him—even _if—_ that didn’t make him a paladin. The others would have to accept him, and that was one thing Lance would never do.

“I can’t,” Keith whispered.

Matt’s hand came down on Keith’s shoulder, and Keith spun, flinching away from the touch. Matt backpedaled, eyes going wide.

Keith backed toward the door, trembling, his breath coming in shallow gasps. “Sorry,” he said, voice taut with nerves. “I’m sorry, I—I need to go. Here.” He fumbled through his pockets until he found the Galra shuttle’s hard drive and tossed it at Matt. “There are access codes on there, if you can get them into your lion or--” He shook his head. “Yeah. Sorry.” Not waiting for an answer, Keith turned and fled the hangar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, you guys, we're actually here. Just one more chapter to go! And it's a double-sized update, because we've still got a long way to go before Team Voltron's out of the woods.
> 
> Before that, though, we've got the last chapter of _Mama Holt's Army_ going up on Friday--and that's _also_ an extra long chapter because Val Mendoza, much like her cousin Lance, doesn't do anything halfway.
> 
> (Seriously, though, thanks to all of you for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, and just generally enjoying these fics so much. Keep an eye out for the notes after next week's chapter, too, because I'll be previewing the future of the Voltron: Duality series.)


	19. Something Bigger Than Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Lance, Matt, and Allura finally met Keith and Shiro face-to-face. Together they attempted a run on Haggar's superweapon but were unable to make it through the Galra army. On the ground, Allura yielded her place as the black paladin to Shiro (despite Matt's protests), and Matt revealed to Keith that the Red Lion had chosen Keith as her second paladin--but because of an unpleasant run-in with Lance, Keith panicked and ran off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for mild body horror. There's no gore, but the implications might be disturbing if you're sensitive to things going wrong with the body in the way only sci Fi/fantasy allows. The scene in question begins with, "Just tell me."

Orgul stalked the halls of the _Herald_ , taking comfort in the fact that, for once, she didn’t have to bear the brunt of Emperor Zarkon’s wrath.

“You’ve landed yourself in quite the bind, Commander,” she said, smiling viciously at her companion.

Dusan scowled. “Weren’t _you_ the one who said those traitors were housebroken?”

Sniffing, Orgul palmed the door controls, waiting for the system to verify her biometrics and let her into the priority communications deck. “ _I_ said nothing of the sort.”

“Right.” Dusan nodded to his lieutenant, who remained outside with Lieutenant Luba. The sound of the door sliding shut behind them ground on Orgul’s nerves. Whether she was the ranking officer on Berlou or not, her position in Lord Zarkon’s inner circle meant she ran the risk of suffering his wrath—rightly deserved or not. Dusan pursed his lips. “Where _is_ your adviser, anyway?”

Orgul keyed her login and waited for the Emperor’s signal. “Back in the core by now, I imagine. He was recalled last night.”

From the skeptical noise in the back of his throat, Dusan believed the excuse about as much as Orgul. “What fortuitous timing for him.”

Before Orgul could voice her agreement, the comm system chirped. Orgul braced herself for the worst, then accepted the transmission and retreated to her position half a step behind Dusan. An instant later the holograms hummed to life, diffuse blue-tinged light condensing into the figures of Emperor Zarkon and the witch Haggar. Orgul and Dusan ducked into jerky bows, while Haggar merely inclined her head.

“Commander Dusan,” Zarkon said in that low, casual voice that sent shivers down Orgul’s spine. She’d never heard Zarkon yell, and she hoped to keep it that way. If the rumors were to be believed, no one who had seen Zarkon angry lived to tell the tale. “I see that your reinforcements have arrived intact, yet you still seem to be having trouble quelling the resistance on Berlou. Why is that?”

Dusan didn’t fidget so much as quiver, the movement too subtle to be seen over the hologram displays. To Haggar and Zarkon, he would appear to be steady and confident, as a Galra prince should be. Orgul knew better. Dusan was scared—and with good reason. “The locals have proved more cunning than anticipated, my lord. Also… Haggar’s project and his minder turned traitor, and we’re still dealing with the fallout.”

If Dusan was hoping to deflect Zarkon’s anger toward Haggar, it didn’t happen. Orgul suspected Haggar had already informed Zarkon of the situation, for he merely nodded, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth. “Have you ended the traitors?”

“Not… Not yet, my lord,” Dusan admitted. “The locals have been sheltering them. They will die with the rest of the beasts once we break through their shields.”

“I would have thought two of my princes could break through a few shields by now.”

Dusan’s tongue flickered out, wetting his lips. “The shields are stronger than any other we have encountered besides our own. They self-repair more quickly than we can damage them. It would take more power than I have at my disposal to break through with brute force.”

“And of course,” said Haggar, “there are the saboteurs. Isn’t that the reason we are speaking with you both from the _Herald’s_ comm deck, rather than the _Standard_?”

Orgul didn’t need to look at Dusan’s face to sense the resentment rolling off him in droves. “The _Standard’s_ comms were damaged in the most recent skirmish,” he said tightly. “And there have been several other… incidents that have set us further behind schedule. But that isn’t the main issue at the moment.”

“No, it is not.” Zarkon leaned forward. “Voltron is there.”

“Part of it,” Haggar said. “I have seen no sign of the Yellow or Green Lions, but the others are here. I expect they will make a run on my flagship sooner or later.”

“We will stop them,” Dusan assured Zarkon.

But Zarkon only smiled. “Leave the paladins to Haggar. She has… a special weapon waiting for them.”

Orgul didn’t like the sound of that, but she knew better than to press for more details. The best thing she could do right now was keep her head down and ride out this disaster. If the chance came to restore her reputation, she would seize it. If not… Well. Let the planet burn, she said. She wasn’t thrilled about giving Haggar another status boost, but bringing Dusan down would at least keep Orgul one step above the bottom of the heap.

“You will continue your assault on the city,” Zarkon told Dusan. “Voltron will not allow Haggar to drain Berlou, so you will hold the resistance at bay until Haggar has dealt with the paladins. Once she has, you will pull out. Haggar is in command from this moment forward.”

It was almost a blessing that Orgul had already relinquished command of this invasion; otherwise, she imagined her face would have looked as pinched as Dusan’s. He visibly bit back a protest and clapped a fist to his shoulder. “Vrepit sa,” he grunted, and Orgul echoed with less spite.

This was going to be an interesting day.

* * *

Allura was still in the depths of strategy discussions with the resistance leaders, Kya and Nue, when Shiro arrived. She was ashamed to admit the sight of his Galra armor, seen out of the corner of her eye, still instinctively made her tense. She waded her way through the unfounded panic and offered him a smile. “How was she?”

“The lion?” Shiro asked. “Uh… Good, I guess. Nothing like any ship I’ve flown before.”

“She’ll help you adjust, as long as you remain open to her,” Allura assured him. “I have faith in you.”

Pausing mid-stride, Shiro blinked at her, surprise plain on his face.

Allura laughed, waving him closer. Shiro’s candor was really quite charming, though she had to wonder how he’d ever managed to convince the Galra he was one of them. “I know how the Black Lion feels about you,” Allura explained, “and she’s always been an excellent judge of character.” Aside from the years she spent bonded to Zarkon, but Allura couldn’t let that color her opinion of Shiro. Zarkon _had_ been a good man once, and none of them had seen his betrayal coming.

For a moment, Shiro just stared at her. Then a slow, genuine smile overtook him. “Thank you, Princess Allura. I’m honored that you think so highly of me.”

“Of course.” She gestured to the holographic replica of the battlefield. “We were just discussing our next steps. Lance and Matt landed a few good hits on one of their warships—the _Standard_ , I believe. The main engines have been damaged enough to keep it grounded for the foreseeable future.”

“Their cannons are still operational,” Nue pointed out, “but the explosives we planted were far away from the engines and were not damaged in the battle.”

Kya called up a model of the ship. There wasn’t much detail, but someone had shaded the damaged sections red and placed a marker near the bow, where the explosives were. “We will detonate this, and all the other explosives we have planted, as a diversion for you.”

Shiro looked between them, a wry smile on his face. “So we _are_ making another run on Haggar’s weapon.”

“We must,” said Allura. “We will target her weapon while the Berlua manage the ground-based forces. Our fighters will distract theirs, and Faus’s cannons will focus on the _Herald_ , giving us a clear shot at that flagship. Speaking of which.” She bowed to Kya and Nue. “Thank you for all your help. I’m going to track down my team and brief them. We’ll contact you when we’re ready to move out. Shiro?”

Shiro hummed, drawing his eyes away from the battle plans. Seeing Allura by the door, he joined her, stroking his chin. “I can’t help but notice you said _manage_. Not defeat, just ‘manage.’” He frowned at her. “I understand that Haggar is the most pressing concern, but shouldn’t we be looking ahead? Even if we stop her, Berlou could still be overrun by Dusan and Orgul’s forces.”

“I know.” Allura breathed a sigh, reaching up to fix her bun. It didn’t need it; it hadn’t been more than an hour or two since they’d left the _Hive_ , but she was nervous, and when she was nervous she needed something to do with her hands. “But Kya and Nue do not believe their aerial forces are strong enough to prevail without our lions—and I’m inclined to agree. Kya and Nue have some plans in mind for the rest of this fight, but they want to wait until we’ve dealt with Haggar and reevaluate the situation before they commit to anything.”

“Makes sense, I suppose,” Shiro said. They walked for a few moments in silence, Allura running through the upcoming battle in her head. It had only been a month since she’d emerged from the cryopod to find her planet ten thousand years dead, but in that time she’d grown accustomed to piloting the Black Lion. It would be strange to let someone else take the controls. That was part of the reason she’d decided not to ride in Black with Shiro.

Lance was waiting just outside the hangar where they’d left the lions, his helmet tucked under his arm. It was painfully obvious that something had upset him, but he ducked Allura’s questions with a grin and a comment about how she ought to be careful. “Keep worrying about me like that and I might fall for you.” Lance’s cheeky grin faltered when he caught sight of Shiro’s frown—more perplexed than angry, Allura thought, but it was enough to make Lance turn tail and sprint into the hangar.

Allura followed Lance inside and spotted Matt perched across the hangar on a stack of crates near the Red Lion. She waved him over while Shiro surveyed the room.

“Has anyone seen Keith?”

The way Lance was facing, Shiro couldn’t have seen the way his eye twitched, brow furrowing, but Allura did, and she frowned at him. Even without turning toward her, Lance flushed. _What did you do, Lance?_

“He was here before,” Matt said, joining them. “He left just about five minutes ago. Not sure where he went.”

Lance frowned at Matt, a question hovering on his lips. Then he shook his head and said, “Well I was just around the corner, and he didn’t come that way.”

Now it was Matt’s turn to look upset. Allura wished there was time to talk to them both and find out what, exactly she’d missed while she was talking with Kya and Nue, but Haggar wouldn’t wait. Setting aside her concerns for another time, Allura drew herself up. “All right, paladins. We have a mission. Haggar’s ship is closing in on Berlou, and we’re the only ones who stand a chance of disabling it before it’s too late.”

Lance turned toward her, earlier unease undetectable under his new-found enthusiasm. “Awesome. What’s the plan?”

“The Berlua are going to take care of the ground-based forces,” she explained, “so all we have to worry about are the ships in orbit and Haggar’s shields.”

“The shields are the real problem,” Shiro said. “We stole that shuttle because it had the security clearance we needed, but without it--”

“No worries there,” Matt said, drawing three very curious stares. “Keith pulled out the shuttle’s hard-drive, and I spliced it into Red’s console. It should give her the same clearance your shuttle had.”

Lance looked like he was going to fall over. “Keith did what now? Are you _sure_ we can trust it?” The look on Shiro’s face stopped whatever else Lance was thinking, and he hunched his shoulders. “I’m just saying.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Allura said firmly, before Shiro could step in. He’d shown admirable self-control thus far, but Allura didn’t want to find out what happened if he was pushed too far—especially now. “We need all the advantages we can get.” She paused for a moment, absorbing this new information, then nodded. “All right. Matt and I will go in on the Red Lion and disable the weapon. Lance, Shiro, you’re our backup. Take care of the fleet in orbit, keep an eye out for any surprises Haggar has planned, and make sure we have a way out.”

“Just the two of you?” Shiro asked. “I don’t know, Princess. Haggar’s no pushover.”

Matt took his hand, smiling encouragingly. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “Allura’s got my back, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to her.”

Shiro stared at Matt for a long moment and worried his lip before finally shaking his head. “It’s not that I doubt either of you, just…”

“I’ll go.”

Allura turned toward the voice and found Keith skulking just inside the door. She wondered how long he’d been there, listening to their conversation, then felt immediately guilty for the suspicion. Lance made a low, unhappy noise in the back of his throat.

Keith scratched the back of his head and picked his way toward them, avoiding eye contact. “I’ll go with Matt and Allura in the Red Lion. Shiro’s right; the more people you have against Haggar, the better.”

Shiro clapped him on the shoulder, smiling warmly. “That’s a great idea, Keith.”

“Hold the phone.” Lance stepped forward, his face so close to Keith that the Galra took a step backward, swallowing. “Isn’t it bad enough they’re going up to a ship full of Galra alone? I’m not letting _you_ get in on the back-stabby fun!”

In an instant, Keith’s expression changed from wariness to anger. He scowled, standing firm as Lance attempted to back him against the wall, and opened his mouth to retaliate.

Allura squared her shoulders, ready to intervene. The last thing they needed now was a fistfight—or worse. Both Lance and Keith looked ready to draw weapons. Thankfully Matt grabbed Lance by the wrist and forced him back two steps. Matt inserted himself between the two, then leaned toward Lance and whispered something Allura couldn’t hear. Lance scowled, and Matt answered with a smile before he turned around. “I’d be happy to have you along, Keith.”

Allura nodded her agreement, and Keith relaxed, offering them both a thin smile.

“All right, paladins,” she said, settling her helmet over her head. “Get ready to move out.”

Matt and Lance headed at once for their lions, but Shiro held Keith back.

“Are you okay?”

Allura didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but in the silence of the hangar, and Altean hearing what it was, it was impossible not to hear the hushed words.

“Fine,” Keith muttered.

Shiro hesitated, and Allura quickened her pace toward the Red Lion. “Are you sure, Keith? You seem--”

“I’m _fine._ ” Keith’s voice rose sharply, and he paused, breathing deeply. “We need to focus on the mission.”

Allura had reached the ramp by this point. She hurried inside, resisting the urge to glance back toward Shiro and Keith. Seconds later, Keith joined her, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed in a way that warded off conversation. Allura spared him a sidelong glance and prayed whatever had happened wouldn’t interfere with the upcoming battle.

* * *

Lance and Shiro led the charge, hoping to create enough of an opening for Matt and his passengers to punch through. Which, you know, was great. The less time Matt had to waste on the small one-man fighters, the better. Even so, he felt guilty hanging back while the others did the dirty work.

His audience didn’t help matters any. Matt was trying his best not to focus on the clawed purple hand gripping the back of his chair, with mixed success. Keith had been nothing but decent since Matt had met him. Shiro obviously trusted him (why wouldn’t he, if Keith had freed him from the Arena?), and even Red accepted him. She’d rumbled softly as Keith boarded with Allura, making Keith tense, and Red seemed offended when he lingered in the back of the cockpit rather than join Matt near the controls. Matt was halfway convinced the turbulence they’d hit shortly after take-off, which had forced Keith forward toward handholds, had been Red’s doing.

There was absolutely no reason to distrust Keith, aside from the simple fact that he was Galra. He was probably a nice kid under all that fur—and maybe if Matt repeated that often enough, he would start to believe it.

The lions screamed toward the Galra encampment, rousing the Galra into a fury. Allura wanted it to look like the warships were their target so that Dusan would pull in most of his troops, concentrating them around the explosives waiting on Allura’s signal. She watched the battle with sharp eyes, tracking the motion of foot soldiers, landspeeders, and larger ships, her breath suspended as she waited for the perfect moment. Matt skimmed low over the _Standard’s_ back, twisting to avoid fire from its turrets. The Galra closed in around him.

“Now!” Allura roared.

Matt pulled up hard, surging ahead of Blue and Black. The explosion lit the clouds with an angry glow, and Red bucked as black smoke churned around her. Keith grunted, staggering through the turbulence. He lost his grip on the chair and flailed for another handhold.

His claws wrapped around Matt’s arm, and Matt froze, terror darkening the edges of his vision.

_Rough hands dragged him from the cell. Claws like knives pierced his skin as he was pinned, thrashing, to an operating room table. Heat like a forge seared the hands into his skin._

It lasted only a moment. Red stabilized, Keith found his balance, and his hand vanished. Matt forced himself to breathe, glad neither of his passengers could see his face. His skin felt like it was on fire, the bone-deep aches that had never really gone away rising to the surface. His vision was spotted with dark floaters, his hands shaking so bad he could barely grip the controls. He flew on instinct, or maybe Red was offering help of her own, because they somehow managed to stay on course, slowing so that the other lions could pull ahead toward the blockade. Lance’s cheers and Shiro’s steady assessment of the damage— _Standard_ demolished, gunships smoking, half the fighters downed or limping, the rest engaged with the resistance forces—swam in and out of Matt’s awareness as he focused on soothing his out-of-control emotions.

 _It was only Keith_ , he told himself. _You can trust him._

He’d meant what he told Keith back in the hangar. Red trusted him. Shiro trusted him. Matt did too, in his head, where everything was rational. It was just that every time he caught sight of Keith, just for an instant he was back on Vel-17. He carried tension in his weary bones, more than he could blame on the battle at hand, and his heart pounded so loud it drowned out Allura’s admonition to focus on the second stage of the battle.

And there was another thing keeping him on edge—Allura. It felt wrong for her to be here, when Matt could see the Black Lion up ahead, a twin blade in her mouth as she tore through the secondary fleet. Allura had been right about one thing: Shiro took to the lion ( _his_ lion?) as fast as any of the other paladins, easily keeping pace with Lance. He was a pilot, the best of his peers, and it showed. Matt didn’t know how to feel about that. Proud of Shiro? Awed of his skill and precision? Or jealous on Allura’s behalf?

 _Focus on Haggar_.

Matt saw an opening in the constellation of fighters and took it, racing for Haggar’s flagship with every ounce of speed Red had to offer. He needed to get Keith and Allura to that ship and help them take out the weapon; he could figure out how he felt about the both of them later.

The particle barrier shimmered ahead of him, and Matt was briefly paralyzed by the thought that he might not make it through. Keith might have—No. Matt might have missed something in connecting the hard drive to his lion. He left the thought there, because counting all the opportunities Keith had had to betray them would get him nowhere but trouble.

Besides, he reasoned, if the access codes didn’t work, they were screwed anyway, so slamming into a wall at full speed might actually be the better way to go. It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought, and it didn’t exactly make him feel more confident, but there wasn’t any more time to argue with himself. He closed his eyes, concentrating on Red’s presence in his mind, and sailed through the shields with nothing more than a faint, nearly inaudible buzz.

Matt opened his eyes, breathed a sigh of relief—and then they’d reached the flagship. The Red Lion changed direction on a dime, her back paws barely nicking the hull as she hugged the ship, weaving between turrets and airlocks. Matt kept her close enough to the ship that the few Galra fighters not caught up fighting Lance and Shiro didn’t dare open fire. It was almost disappointing; Matt could have gone for some friendly fire right about now.

Keith leaned forward, his arm reaching past Matt’s ear as he pointed at something up ahead. Matt’s skin crawled, but Red roared in his mind, clawing his focus back to the high-speed slalom ahead of him, and he managed to intuit what it was Keith wanted him to see. A massive violet crystal peeked out beyond the curve of the hull, growing larger as they approached. Matt hissed a curse.

They rounded the bottom edge of the ship and shot into open air, giving Matt a brief look at the weapon: five crystals, each the size of Red, each guarded by a Galra in billowing robes with lightning crackling between their palms.

There wasn’t time to take in more; as soon as the Red Lion came into view, the Galra unleashed a storm, and Matt had to tuck into a roll to avoid getting fried.

“Druids!” Keith cried, grunting as he slammed against the wall. “ _Vrekt_. And Haggar’s here, too.”

Matt caught a fleeting glimpse of a grin beneath the shadow of a hood, red streaks like tear tracks down the Galra’s cheeks. She stood beside the central crystal, the largest of the five, which seemed to hover in its setting, completely unsupported. Unlike the other four druids, Haggar’s hands remained loose at her side, as though she couldn’t be bothered to exert herself in this fight.

“Matt,” Keith said, dragging himself back toward the pilot’s seat. “You need to get us up there. If I can get on that platform, I can distract some of the druids while you take out those crystals.”

“Right. Hold on.” Matt pulled back, testing the druids’ reach and the speed with which they could adjust their aim. Haggar was still staying out of the fight, which made Matt nervous, but he wasn’t going to wait for her to make the first move. He breathed in and out and darted forward, skimming so close under a bolt of violet lightning that the electronics in the cockpit buzzed. Keith hissed a curse, the flick of his ears a distracting blur at the corner of Matt’s vision. Matt bit his tongue, rolled back the other way, then swung his lion toward the nearest crystal.

Matt slapped a button on his control panel and the bottom dropped out of the cockpit, ejecting Keith and Allura onto the narrow catwalk connecting the outer crystals. Allura landed in a crouch and launched herself at the nearest druid, punching him in the jaw. Keith’s landing was less graceful, but he turned it into a roll, then ran around the outer catwalk, activating a sword that glowed with a familiar purple light--

Matt yanked backwards on the controls, narrowly dodging twin lightning bolts from behind. He lost sight of Keith in the chaos, though he saw Allura spin her opponent around so he took the lightning bolt meant for her.

For a moment, the air was still and clear, sharp with the acrid scent of ozone. Dark afterimages replaced the lightning for the space of two heartbeats before the onslaught resumed, this time with yellow lightning in place of violet. “What the--?” Matt cut off, pulling up hard on the controls. Red groaned in protest, her eyes rolling toward the battle taking place overhead. Just a flash, an impressionist painting of white armor and yellow eyes and violet lightning.

 _Violet_.

Keith and Allura faced violet magic still, but the druid targeting Matt had changed to some other spell. _Why?_ What difference did it make if—?

Matt felt the temperature drop a split second before a massive, writhing trunk of black electricity filled the viewscreen. Matt sucked in a sharp breath, the ice in the air worming its way into his veins.

Shiro’s scream over the comm turned the ice to liquid nitrogen. For a second that scream was the only thing Matt could feel. Not his hands, not Red’s presence in his mind. Just Shiro, screaming in agony, and a sky full of black lightning.

“Shiro? _Shiro_? Shit—Lance, what’s happening out there?!”

“I-I don’t know, it’s--” Lance grunted, swore, fell silent.

Shiro bit down on his screams. “Haggar,” he ground out. “She’s--”

Matt didn’t hear the rest of Shiro’s sentence. His world went white, pain sprouting in his fingers and the soles of his feet and worming its way toward his center. He might have screamed, or that might have only been Red crying in his head. He tasted blood. He thought he might be dying. He hoped Shiro was okay.

* * *

“Shiro?” Lance shot down two Galra fighters who were getting too close for comfort, then glanced again at the Black Lion, wreathed in lightning darker than the backdrop of stars around them. Beyond her, beyond the shimmer of Haggar’s shield, the Red Lion crackled with whitish-yellow electricity. “Shiro, c’mon buddy, talk to me. Matt?”

This was not going well. The blockade was a joke, but now Haggar and a handful of Galra so scrawny they made Keith look like the pinnacle of Galra physique were trashing them? How was that fair?

Another squadron of fighters was making a run on the lions—probably thinking they’d have a chance now that it was just Lance and Blue up and fighting. _Sorry, ya bunch of overgrown Furbies, but I’m not going down that easy._ He lined up his shot, thumbs hovering over the trigger, and let loose.

A laser blast from behind clipped Blue’s flank, throwing off Lance’s aim. Panic and focus ran parallel in his head. He fired without thinking, a flood of adrenaline and a prickling sensation along his spine pooling underneath the more rational part of him that was tallying the enemies. Four up ahead—two, now that his lasers found their targets—at least one behind. He unleashed a wave of ice that took care of the rest of the visible opponents, then whirled around, charging a laser, ready to face an entire fleet.

Instead, he found only the Black Lion, eyes glowing jack-o-lantern yellow through the corona of black electricity. Shiro’s comms had gone dead, and Lance’s increasingly frantic calls went unanswered as Black fired again at the Blue Lion.

* * *

_Shiro drifted alone in the darkness._

_Around him, pain. Flashes of light. Sound… voices…_

“ _Shiro! Vrekt. **Shiro!** ”_

“ _Shiro, buddy, help me out here. You gotta fight this!”_

_Familiar voices._

_Memories floated just out of reached, hazy and dull. They seemed important, but he couldn’t remember why._

_Someone was screaming._

_Someone…_

_The darkness clung to him, dragging down. He thrashed toward the screams, some primal part of him still fighting as his thoughts turned murky._

_**Fight this.** _

_Another voice, less familiar, but closer than the rest._

_**You must fight.** _

_An image formed itself in his mind, crystal clear and utterly impossible. The face of a black lion swam before his eyes, her gaze like twin suns in the dead of night._

_**Fight.** _

_**I will help.** _

* * *

Allura tossed the desiccated corpse of her opponent aside, fighting down queasiness. At this range, she’d felt the other druid’s magic draining the Quintessence from him. She hadn’t expected the druids to kill each other in their attempt to reach Allura, but it was quickly becoming clear that the old Galra honor was no more, not even among comrades.

There was no time to grieve the universe she’d left behind. Shiro still wasn’t responding, and Lance muttered a litany of curses as he dodged laser fire on all fronts. Allura could sense Balck’s pain and fear like a fist around her heart, as sharp as the sound of Matt’s ragged breathing. Keith felled his opponent and took off at a sprint around the circular catwalk toward the nearest druid, one of the two attacking the Red Lion. The druid turned her magic on Keith, who caught it on his luminous sword and drew his dagger with his left hand.

There was something fundamentally _wrong_ about the golden lightning they were using against the Red Lion. Something unsettling. The violet magic pulled at Allura like a vacuum; the yellow, in contrast, was off-putting because it was altogether too much, packed full of so much Quintessence—or something like it—that it made Allura’s ears ring even at a distance. She shivered as she back up. Two long strides carried her to the edge of the platform and she leaped, sailing across open air and an endless sea of stars.

The fourth druid saw her coming and turned, but Allura was already atop him, grabbing his wrists before he could turn his magic on Allura. The magic around Red crackled, then sizzled out. She drifted, eyes flickering.

“Matt!” Allura shouted, grappling with the druid. The man was slighter than most Galra, but he still had his species’ brute strength, and Allura found herself being forced back toward the edge of the catwalk. “Matt, answer me!”

The comms gave no answer but pained wheezing and Lance’s unending curses—spiking suddenly as Black’s laser clipped Blue’s flank. Allura’s heart constricted, and she focused all her worry into her limbs, halting her backward slide.

Quicker than Allura could track, Red’s tail arced up over her head and let loose two quick laser bursts.

Haggar screamed as the lasers tore through the two undefended crystals. Knife-sharp shards exploded outward, and the catwalk under Allura’s feet bucked. She dropped to one knee as her opponent stumbled, and in the same motion tossed the man over her shoulder.

He twisted as he fell, latching onto Allura’s ankle. Allura’s chin cracked against the catwalk, and she laced her fingers through the metal grating, catching herself just before she plunged off the ship, but that left her legs swinging free beneath the catwalk, the druid still clinging to one foot. Allura’s hip screamed in pain. She spit out a mouthful of blood and kicked at the deadweight, bringing her heel down again and again until he lost his grip.

He screamed, but only for an instant before he passed beyond the ship’s artificial atmosphere.

Even without the added weight, Allura’s grip was weakening, her fingers losing feeling as the grating cut off circulation. If she didn’t find a way to pull herself up soon, she was going to follow the druid out into the vacuum of space—but there was nowhere for her to get leverage, just the catwalk above her head and ozone-sharp air all around her.

Haggar’s magic was all that remained now, a tether between her and the Black Lion. Allura felt an icy jolt cross the distance, and she turned just in time to see Black seize up. She no longer fired at Lance, but hung suspended in a void of light, quivering. It was not a stillness that came from exhaustion or damage; it was willful restraint, and sympathetic rigor froze Allura joints.

_Fight._

The whisper came to Allura from all around, but she knew the voice—if it could be called a voice and not mere suggestion—belonged to the Black Lion.

_Fight._

_Help him._

Allura didn’t know what that meant, but she reached out toward her lion, trusting Black would know that Allura was willing to help in whatever way she could. Her offer went unanswered for the briefest of moments, and then something dark and oppressive closed in around her, a vice constricting around her lungs.

Allura steeled herself, her Quintessence awakening in response to the threat, ready to change her or heal her. It slid beneath her skin, an invisible shield warding off the _other_ that lurked somewhere in the darkness. That other presence tried to make Allura move, but she stood firm, sensing within her bond Black’s defiance.

A streak of red blotted out Allura’s vision as Matt threw his lion between Shiro and Haggar, biting down on a cry of pain. Allura sagged with the sudden release, reminded suddenly of where she was and of her weakening grip on the catwalk overhead.

Her head pounded with pain and confusion, but the Black Lion had withdrawn from her mind, leaving her with nothing but numbness spreading from her fingertips toward her wrists.

“Matt!” Lance yelled.

The cry jerked Allura out of her thoughts and she turned toward where she’d last seen the Red Lion. A flame ignited deep in the nothingness of Haggar’s magic and grew into an inferno. It roard toward Haggar, burning hotter with every passing second. In the instant before she would have been consumed, Haggar flickered and disappeared, her final curse echoing across the chamber.

The central crystal withstood Red’s flames for two interminable ticks, and then it shattered. The resulting shockwave buffeted Allura and rattled the catwalk, dislodging her failing grip. Heart seizing, Allura groped for another handhold, but the lip of the catwalk slipped past her fingers like silk.

A hand closed around her wrist, and she jerked to a halt.

Keith grunted, reaching his other arm down to strengthen his hold on her. He lay prone on the catwalk above her, sharp teeth bared in a grimace of concentration. “Matt!” he shouted. “Incoming.”

Allura followed Keith’s gaze to the Red Lion, which hovered some distance below her, listing to one side. She didn’t have time to ask Keith what his plan was; as soon as Matt turned his lion toward them, Keith swung her back and forth once, twice--

He released her, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach as she flew through the air. For a moment it was just her and the void around her, the edge of the artificial atmosphere shimmering just a fraction of a tick below her. The moment passed. Red caught Allura in her mouth, and Keith appeared behind her, grinning a manic grin. He straightened as Allura skidded to a stop against the wall, flat on her back.

“Don’t _ever_ do that again,” she said, too breathless to give the reprimand the gravity it deserved.

Keith laughed once, extending a hand to help her up. She accepted, dusting herself off as she headed up the ramp toward the cockpit.

“Excellent work, Matt,” she said. “Shiro, are you--?”

Allura cut off as the Red Lion lurched and she fell against the wall, hip flaring with pain. The view through the lion’s eyes tilted. Fear closed around Allura’s throat and she dragged herself toward Matt’s pilot seat. The stench of melted plastic and singed hair filled her nostrils, and her stomach turned over. She opened her mouth to ask Matt if he was all right, but the words died in her throat once she caught sight of him, holes seared through the fabric of his gloves, strain around his eyes.

He held onto consciousness just long enough to meet Allura’s gaze. In the next heartbeat, his eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped against the controls.

Red entered a dive, the slant of the floor bringing Keith and Allura skidding to the front of the cockpit as Matt lolled against his restraints. Keith’s breath caught in his throat.

“Shit,” he hissed.

The comms crackled, and Shiro’s voice filled the cockpit. “What happened? What—Matt?”

“He’s fine,” Allura said quickly. “Focus on the battle—that goes double for you, Lance.” Before either of them could protest, Allura turned off the comms in her armor and on Red’s control panel, then stared hard at Keith, who was looking at Matt with wide eyes and lowered ears. “Help me with the restraints. Keith— _Keith!_ ”

He gave a start, then nodded, fumbling with the release. Allura freed the catch on her side, trying not to dwell on the fact that this was the Red Lion, and that she could very easily reject Allura as a pilot. Failure was not an option. Allura was of the royal line; she was here for exactly this sort of emergency. She could do this. She could. Matt and Keith’s lives depended on it.

Somewhere outside the cockpit, the Galra had noticed the plummeting lion, and they opened fire. The cockpit shoot with the impact, and Matt was thrown free from his chair. Allura wrapped her arms around him, cushioning his fall. They landed sprawled, Matt releasing a short, pained groan.

Keith gasped.

Allura’s head snapped up. The _Herald_ loomed ahead of them, large enough to fill the viewscreen and impossibly close. She heard the whine of charging canons—but they would crash into the warship long before it had a chance to fire on them. Cold dread pooled in her chest. With Matt’s limp body sprawled across her legs, Allura couldn’t get to the controls. Not before it was too late for any of them.

_No… Not yet. Not like this._

“ _Vrekt_ ,” Keith hissed, then threw himself into the pilot seat and grabbed the controls.

Red answered with a roar that resounded in Allura’s chest. Shock hit her like a plasma cannon blast, and all she could do was gape as Keith pulled up, skimming along the hull of the _Herald_ and darting between charges from the hull-mounted laser cannons.

He was piloting the Red Lion. He was--

The Red Lion had accepted him.

Allura’s jaw dropped. “How is this possible?”

Keith snorted a laugh. “That’s what I said.”

Questions piled upon questions in Allura’s mind. How was Keith piloting the Red Lion? Did that make him a paladin? Lions chose paladins for life. Successors were not accepted until the previous paladin had died or relinquished their bond. That was accepted fact, a truth unchanged since the birth of Voltron. If Red had chosen Keith, did that mean Matt was...?

Allura looked down at his pinched face, then shoved aside her fears. He wasn’t dead yet, though the druids’ magic had left him in poor shape. Allura placed a hand on his forehead and called on her Quintessence, hoping she might be able to ease some of his pain until they were able to get him to a healing pod.

Instead, Matt convulsed under her touch, letting out a cry of pain so sharp Allura snatched her hand back.

He quieted at once. Only the hiss of air through his teeth showed that anything at all had happened, but Allura wasn’t about to try her luck a second time.

She caught Keith staring at them, though he quickly redirected his gaze to the battle outside and opened fire on a squadron of fighters on the Black Lion’s tail. He opened his mouth, paused, then said, “So what’s the plan?”

Allura stared down at Matt for a long moment. The battle wasn’t over yet, but Matt’s condition had her worried, and in any case they had to report back to Kya and Nue. Taking a deep breath, Allura reached up and switched her comms back on. “Lance, Shiro, return to Faus. We need to reassess the situation.”

* * *

Orgul punched a hole through the display screen, eliminating the passive-aggressive text transmission from Haggar’s crew. That witch could fill her message with all the condescension and regulatory nothings she wanted, but the fact remained.

She was pulling out.

‘ _Due to your inability to suppress a rebellion’ my ass,_ Orgul thought striding from the room in search of something more productive to do. It wasn’t _her_ fault the battle for Berlou had dragged on this long; Dusan was in charge of that. Vrekt, it wasn’t even his fault Haggar’s precious weapon had been mauled to rubble. Orgul would have _gladly_ led her men against the Voltron Lions—with only half their number present, they wouldn’t have posed much of a threat.

But no, Haggar had to come in and co-opt all the glory, just like she always did. Well, she’d failed this time, and Orgul didn’t bother tamping down on her satisfaction. Haggar had been Emperor Zarkon’s right hand for far too long. Let her run away with her tail between her legs. Orgul and Dusan would clean up the rebellion without her magic, and Orgul would reclaim her standing among the princes.

Aides and junior officers scurried around her, their nervous flutter belying their desire to be far, _far_ away from her wrath, but they knew better than to stray. Orgul was not a woman who liked being made to wait, and with the way her day was going, pissing her off was a quick way to get yourself jettisoned. She checked her wrist unit again, hoping Dusan would have (finally) responded to her request for an emergency strategy council, but her memos were all from troop coordinators recounting their losses (severe) and senior engineers updating her on the status of her warship (depressing.)

At the comm deck door, Orgul slammed her hand against the scanner so hard the glass cracked, and several of the aides around her flinched at the sound.

Orgul ignored them, gesturing for Luba to hail Dusan as she took her place on the comm pad. Luba was just the right combination of loyal and insubordinate to hammer through an emergency transmission, not bothering to give Dusan the option to decline. His face, as he appeared before Orgul, was strained.

“What do you want, Orgul?” he snapped. “I’m in the middle of damage control.”

“So am I.” Orgul tapped her wrist unit and sent Dusan another copy of Haggar’s message. “Did you see this?”

Dusan paused to glance at his wrist, grimaced, then went back to typing frantically at his keyboard. “Vrekt. Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t--” Orgul’s hand closed around the sheath at her side. “Dusan, you need to take charge of the situation. If we don’t put these vermin on the defensive soon, they’ll--”

“I’m _handling_ it, Commander.” Dusan’s voice had dropped to a growl, and he looked up from his screen just long enough to fix her with a dagger glare. “Have your troops engage the fighters in the air. We’ll need space to breathe if we want to make any headway.”

“And Voltron? What’s the plan for dealing with _them_?”

“You have your orders, Orgul, and I have a warship that’s lying in pieces in a damned desert, so if you’ll excuse me.”

He cut the communication before Orgul could protest. She swore, but bit her tongue before she could launch into a rant about exactly how much of a coward Dusan really was.

Orgul’s wrist unit chirped with an incoming message—the analysis she’d requested had been completed. At least someone on this ship was doing their job. She checked the map attached to the message and grudgingly admitted that Haggar had her uses.

She turned to Luba. “Lieutenant, you have the command.”

Turning, Luba regarded her with calculating eyes. The woman didn’t let her surprise show, but there was an air of wariness to her that spoke to fear and confusion. “Sir?”

Orgul turned toward the door, plans and risk factors tabulating in her head. She could send a squadron… She _should_ send a squadron, but this whole shitheap of an invasion had proven one thing: If you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself. She left Luba behind without a word of explanation.

* * *

The landing was rougher than it should have been, but Shiro was finding it hard to focus on flying. His body felt strange, like his skin didn’t fit him quite right. Haggar’s presence in his mind was gone, but she’d left behind the sensation of sludge and rot. No one said anything about what had happened, and he was afraid to ask. He didn’t think he’d killed anyone—and the fact that _that_ was his first thought said enough by itself. The face of a nameless Nyxt watched him from the corners of his vision.

His hands shook, and he lingered for a moment at the controls, the Black Lion’s presence pawing uncomfortably at his mind. Shiro shut her out, his heart slamming against his ribcage. He’d had enough intruders in his mind for one day.

The lion’s hurt echoed at him as though from a great distance, and Shiro slumped. _I can’t do this,_ he thought. _I can’t be a paladin. I’m only putting the others at risk._

Matt was the only thing holding him together. He hadn’t said a word since Shiro came back to himself, and before that--

_Allura said he’s fine. You’re imagining things._

But if Matt was fine, wouldn’t have said something by now? His screams, real or imagined, rang in Shiro’s ear. The cockpit’s lights flickered off, and Shiro forced himself to his feet, down the ramp, and across the hangar toward the Red Lion.

The sight of Matt, limp in Allura’s arms, almost cut Shiro’s legs out from under him, but he stumbled onward, numb and queasy. He stopped short of yanking Matt away from Allura, but it was a near thing. He was breathing, his brows furrowed in pain, and the warring relief and worry rooted Shiro to the spot.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat, searching for his voice. “What…?”

Lance roared as he charged past Shiro, hooking his fingers in the seam of Keith’s armor and shaking him. “ _What did you do?_ ”

Keith staggered, looking stunned. “I didn’t--”

“Lance!” Allura snapped. “Let him go.”

He rounded on her, still holding onto Keith with one hand. “But— _Matt._ ”

“Haggar did this,” Allura said. “Not Keith.” Shiro stiffened at the witch’s name, his eyes riveted on Matt’s pale face. _I should have stopped this. I should have been able to protect him._ What the hell had made him think he could lead the Voltron paladins? He couldn’t even keep Matt safe. “Go get help. _Now,_ Lance,” she added as Lance opened his mouth to protest.

He hesitated a moment longer, scowling at Keith, then sprinted out of the hangar.

Shiro listened to the fading sound of his footsteps, hurried and heavy, but couldn’t drag his eyes away from Matt. _Haggar did this._ Shiro’s gut churned. He knew all too well what Haggar was capable of. What she did with her magic. Matt wasn’t supposed to fall victim to her. He wasn’t supposed to suffer. That was why he’d taken his place in the Arena, wasn’t it? Shiro was older. He’d undergone more extensive physical training. He could take it. He could take anything.

Except the sight of Matt, still and pale and whimpering in pain.

“Is he going to be all right?” Keith asked, hovering at Shiro’s shoulder.

Allura hesitated, and Shiro felt the silence like a punch to the ribs. “He will be fine. I swear it.”

Long seconds ticked by. Allura lowered Matt to the ground, and Shiro knelt beside him, pulling his head into his lap. Someone had removed Matt’s helmet, and his dirty blond hair clung to his face in sweaty waves. It was longer than Shiro remembered from before all this, his face thinner, his eyes ringed by dark shadows. What had they done to him? Shiro wished he knew. He wished he could be certain he hadn’t damned Matt by sending him away.

At last Lance returned, a trio of Berlua on his heels. Two of them carried a crude sling between them, and they lifted Matt onto it as the third Berlua ran some kind of a scanner over his head and chest, muttering to themself. Shiro clung to Matt’s hand, stumbling along after the medics as they whisked Matt away. At the door, Allura stopped Shiro with a hand on his shoulder. For a moment, Shiro thought he might just ignore her and chase after them. She was the better paladin, anyway.

Instead, he stopped. With Matt gone, the reality of the situation came crashing back in. They’d destroyed Haggar’s weapon, but that felt like a hollow victory. She still had the power to take over Shiro’s body—a fact he’d known, and dreaded, for the last four months. Somehow he’d convinced himself it wasn’t an issue, that she couldn’t use him any longer, that her power over him faded with time.

Right.

He turned to Allura, trying to find the words to tell her that she had to pilot the Black Lion again, that he couldn’t be trusted.

“We must hurry,” Allura said. “The three of you need to get back in the air. I’ll coordinate with the Berlua and advise you on the plan.”

The confession stuck in Shiro’s throat.

Lance, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. “Wait, wait, wait, _what_ ? _Three_ of us? What the—What does _he_ have to do with anything?” He flung his finger out, the tip of his glove skimming just underneath Keith’s nose.

Allura glared him down. “ _Keith_ ,” she said pointedly, “is going to be piloting the Red Lion.”

Lance recoiled in horror. “No way. No _freaking_ way. What about Matt?”

“Matt is in no condition to fight at the moment.”

“What about _you_?”

Allura let out a short, impatient huff. “We don’t have time for this. The Red Lion chose Keith, and you’re just going to have to accept that. Now go. I’ll contact you once I’ve reached central command.”

As she turned to leave, Shiro drew in a breath. It was now or never. He had to tell her. She needed to know who she’d placed in charge of this team. _I’ll coordinate with the Berlua. They need you in the air._

The moment passed.

Lance muttered something under his breath in Spanish, glared at Keith, then turned and stalked back toward his lion. Keith bristled, but visibly shook it off and glanced at Shiro. “You okay?”

“Fine," Shiro said. Keith’s frown deepened. He knew what Haggar was capable of; he probably knew what had really happened up there. Shiro glanced at Lance’s retreating back, then dropped his voice low. “You didn’t tell them. That Haggar can..." _Control me._

It wasn’t a question, and Keith didn’t give him an answer. Instead, he just clapped Shiro on the shoulder, forced a smile, then glanced behind him at the still, watchful figure of the Red Lion. “Matt said she’d chosen me, you know.” The words startled Shiro, who stared at Keith in awe. Keith squirmed, not meeting his eyes. “I thought he was crazy. Guess the universe has a sense of humor, huh?”

“Keith--”

Keith shook his head, stepping back so that his hand slid off of Shiro’s shoulder. “Good luck out there. Don’t you die on me today.”

He should say something. Assure Keith he belonged on this team—because he did. _The Black Lion should have chosen you._ Instead he smiled, thin and feeble. “Good luck, Keith.”

* * *

Allura burst into the command room, a wall of sound and motion her only welcome. Berlua and a handful of offworlders darted here and there, most of them preoccupied with holographic displays and data reports. A dozen conversations overlapped, the words blurring together into one big knot of tension and semi-controlled chaos. The fear and the hope were equally palpable, neither one rising high enough to overwhelm the other.

She found Kya and Nue in the eye of the storm, bent over their model of the battlefield, which updated in real time to show troop locations and weaknesses in both the Galra and the Berlua defenses. Allura scanned it as she approached, taking in the broad strokes of the battle as it stood. The _Standard_ was grounded, shredded from the Berlua explosives. Possibly a few turrets were still functional, but the photon cannon was nothing more than a lump of melted metal.

The _Herald_ , on the other hand, was airborne, and very much operational. The city shook—not the first time it had done so since Allura had left the hangar. Alarms rang from the control panels around the room, and a section of the city’s shield on the holomap flashed red.

“Photon cannon?” Allura asked. Kya nodded. “How are the shields?”

“Holding,” Nue said shortly. “Your team?”

Allura removed her helmet, wiping sweat from her brow. “They’re heading out to rejoin the battle as we speak. We did manage to disable Haggar’s weapon.”

“Indeed.” Kya pressed a button on the control panel, and a video feed appeared in the air over the map, showing Haggar’s flagship—limping, lopsided, missing a chunk of its underbelly—as it disappeared through a wormhole. “She has retreated.”

A sigh of relief escaped Allura, despite her efforts for control. With Haggar gone, the odds were looking much better.

Nue’s look said she was celebrating too soon. “We detected something on our long-range scanners.”

“What?”

The image that appeared over the map said it all. Three beacons closing in on Berlou from different directions, each large enough that Allura couldn’t pretend they weren’t warships. Orgul had called for reinforcements. Allura swore under her breath and tapped her earrings to open a channel to the paladins.

“Haggar’s pulled out, but we’re about to get company.”

“What sort of company?” Lance asked suspiciously.

Allura glanced at the scanners and grimaced. “Three more warships. Be ready.”

Lance swore, Keith grunted, and Shiro breathed out a long breath. “We can do this,” he said. “Just stay calm.”

Despite the situation, Allura smiled. It was nice to have another grounding presence on the team. Once this had all blown over—assuming they all survived—and Allura had a chance to get to know the new paladins, she suspected she was going to like them quite a lot. Until then, she sent a silent prayer to the ancient heart of Altea and hoped the others would be able to pull this off.

Another explosion rocked the city, and Allura braced herself against the console. The tremors lasted only a moment, but before Allura could ask the Berlua about their battle plans, a new alarm went off. At first, Allura thought it was just another warning from the shields, protesting the bombardment. Worrisome, but as long as the paladins were able to draw off some of Dusan’s attention, it wouldn’t be the end of them. The Berlua’s shields had a remarkable propensity for self-repair.

But the alarm didn’t shut itself off after a moment of panic, as it had every time before. It kept blaring, the shield on the hologram flashing red all over.

Then, quite abruptly, both the shield and the siren vanished.

Allura’s blood ran cold. “What was that?” she asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.

Nue’s long, multi-jointed fingers flew over the console, their brow more wrinkled than usual. They sucked on their bottom lip and shook their head, muttering too softly for Allura to discern words.

Kya’s eyes followed the line of text flashing across Nue’s screen, and they recoiled, reddish skin fading to an ashen pink. “The shields are down,” they said in a horrified whisper.

“ _What?_ How? Did they hit something--?”

“They were shut down,” Kya said, their voice oddly level. “It wasn’t damage. They just… shut off.”

_Saboteurs._

Allura tapped a button on the arm of her paladin’s armor, copying the base map from the console. She called it up, marking the location of the main shield generator, and turned toward the door. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll stop them.”

She left before Kya or Nue could talk her out of it.

* * *

“Paladins, come in.”

Allura’s voice hissed through Lance’s comms, tinny and distorted, like there was some kind of interference on the line. Or...well, something like that. Lance didn’t know if alien comm systems _got_ interference. He didn’t really even know all that much about _Earth_ communication systems. That was the Comm Officer’s job, so Lance had always just left it to Pidge to figure out all that boring stuff.

But Pidge wasn’t here now, and Lance could only guess at the reason for the funky audio quality.

“We read you, Princess,” Shiro said, as courteous and professional as always. It was nice—right? It felt like the Garrison, felt like a simulation, felt like someone here belonged in the pilot seat during a life-and-death battle for the fate of the universe. Having Shiro there with his steady nerves and soothing voice and level head was… nice.

Except he wasn’t Allura.

Lance cursed himself for thinking it. Shiro was a legend. More importantly, Shiro was Lance’s _idol._  He should be _thrilled_ that they were flying together. Maybe Keith was a sucky addition to the team, but Shiro shouldn’t have left such a sour taste in his mouth. He just… Every time he heard Shiro’s voice instead of Allura’s, it reminded him where he was, and how far out of his depth he was.

“There’s a saboteur in Faus,” Allura said. Lance sucked in a breath, and the other two were eerily silent on the comms. “We’re handling the situation, but the primary shield is down. I need you to keep the Galra away from the city until we’ve restored power.”

 _Shit._ Lance’s fingers tightened around the controls. This was bad. This was really, really bad. He didn’t know how a Galra had managed to get into Faus, or if there was a traitor on the inside, or if they had someone like Pidge would could hack a toaster from the moon—but he knew things had just gone from regular-scary to millions-of-people-will-die-if-you-screw-up scary. Images of bombed factories, burning houses, holes in the ground, and far too many corpses peppered his thoughts, and he struggled to focus.

 _Don’t think about that,_ he told himself (because that was helpful.) _Just focus on Blue and on the battle and on the Galra._ His eyes drifted toward the Red Lion. Keith had shut off the video feed, leaving an empty frame in the corner of Lance’s screen beneath Shiro’s. It stared at him, taunting, as damning as the video would have been. _There’s a Galra in the Red Lion,_ the empty box said. _Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there._

He wondered if Keith had been the one to take down the shield. It was impossible, of course. Keith had been with one of the paladins for all but about five minutes (hadn't he?) and that wasn’t enough time to do any real damage (was it?)

Lance tried to tell himself he was overreacting. Matt and Allura seemed to trust Keith just fine, and they were generally smarter than Lance, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t being skeptical enough. Shiro could be wrong about Keith. If he was a spy, he’d _have_ to be good at acting innocent and making friends. And without Shiro, what proof did they really have that Keith was on their side? A knife? Big whoop.

Okay, sure, Lance was pretty sure Keith and Shiro _had_ been the ones on the castle-ship who’d made contact before they left. It had been a short conversation, but Lance would recognize that ego anywhere. Keith thought he was so much better than Lance just because he’d killed Sendak (except he totally _hadn’t)_ , and he had that stupidly annoying kind of condescension that said _I don’t have time to tell you how much better I am so we’re just gonna skip right to the part where it’s accepted fact._

...Not that Lance didn’t trust Keith because of a bruised ego. God, he wasn’t _that_ petty. He just wanted to keep his friends safe, and Keith wasn’t doing himself any favors with his bad attitude.

By this point, Keith and Shiro had already joined the battle, hunting down any Galra ships that came too close to the city. Keith did some kind of flashy, over-the-top flippy maneuver and brought down a gunship on top of a squadron of fighters, because of _course_ he wanted to show off. _Arrogant little--_

Lance leaned forward, diving into the fray. _Fine._ He would fight alongside Keith for now _._ Not like anyone had given him a choice in the matter. But as long as they were going to team up, Lance was going to show that purple asshole what a _real_ paladin of Voltron could do.

* * *

Allura left her comms on as she made her way toward the shield generators, but the signal was unreliable at best. Part of it may have been the sheer number of people using their comms at once; Allura had to fight her way upstream as people fled the rumors of Galra infiltrators, or searched for loved ones, or sprinted for their posts as Nue put out an all-call alerting the reserves to the shift in battle. But the volume of transmissions couldn’t fully account for the rapidly degrading quality of Allura’s channel. It was getting worse the closer she got to the main shield generators, which suggested that either the saboteur had something on them to block signals, or whatever they’d used to bring down the shields was affecting the comms in the area as well.

“Princ--” Kya’s voice was faint and garbled in Allura’s ear, and she stopped moving for a moment to listen to the transmission. “--problem. Secondary shields two and—down. Security teams aren’t--”

The rest of the message was lost to white noise, but Allura had heard enough. She checked her map for the location of the secondary shield generators and adjusted her course toward the one marked by the number two. Generator Three lay between it and the primaries, and Allura hoped the saboteur was being opportunistic in their attacks, just hitting whatever they passed as they sprinted for the edge of the city. If they had a plan to throw the resistance off their trail, or if there were multiple saboteurs acting independently, this was going to be much harder.

Two Berlua guards lay dead outside Generator Two, but Allura didn’t have time to mourn them. There were two shield generators equidistant from this location, separated from each other by half a mark. She would lose precious minutes if she chose wrong, but the chatter from the paladins, along with Kya and Nue’s channel, had gone dead.

A corner of her mind recognized that this meant the Galra was using some kind of disruptor to block the shields, which was both good news and bad. A disruptor meant the Galra hadn’t taken the time to physically destroy the shield generators; if the resistance could find and deactivate the disruptors, they could restore the shields. Unfortunately, disruptors had been palm-sized devices even ten thousand years ago. By now Zarkon might have created something the size of a fingernail. It could take hours to locate all of them—especially if the saboteur managed to plant more before Allura stopped them.

She checked her map again. The path the saboteur had followed so far didn’t seem to be leading anywhere in particular. Not the command center, not the industrial district. Generator Six, one of the two nearest Allura’s current location, protected a small cluster of hangars, but the resistance ships were already in the air. Generator Seven to the south protected a residential sector, where one of the main med clinics was located.

Allura took off at a dash toward Generator Seven. She couldn’t know for certain that this was the direction the Galra had gone, but she couldn’t risk the civilians hiding there. Her comms stuttered back to life as she passed beyond the radius of the disruptor, and for several long moments she feared she’d made the wrong call. Shiro’s voice came through for a brief moment, ordering the other two paladins to flank a squadron of fighters. Though he sounded tense, he controlled his nerves well. The Black Lion hadn’t chosen him for nothing.

Just as Allura was about to change course, the signal began once more to fade. Another disruptor had been activated. She didn’t slow until she reached the block that housed the shield generator, then paused to listen for sounds of motion. The tunnels had been deathly silent for the last several blocks, their occupants either fled or hidden. They knew something was happening, and they were smart enough to stay out of the way.

Allura was glad they were safe. She was even more grateful for the silence, which allowed her to detect the sound of a solitary pair of feet around the corner, heading away from the shield generator.

Wishing she had stopped to grab a weapon before chasing after the saboteur, Allura sprinted around the corner and narrowly dodged a laser blast to the chest. The Galra ahead wore armor emblazoned with the red sigil of command. She was tall and broad-shouldered with wide ears, an up-turned nose, and teeth like tusks visible between her lips, and Allura couldn’t say who would win in a contest of strength.

The Galra fired again, and Allura dove for cover.

She really should have grabbed a gun.

* * *

Pidge was the first one into the wormhole. They didn’t know what was waiting for them on the other side, but they were expecting the worst. It had ended up taking a little more than an hour for Hunk to get Yellow back in battle-ready shape—long enough for Pidge to install a converter and shielding and hook their prototype lightning generator into Green’s system. They were mostly sure it was safe, but less confident that it would _work_. As rushed as they’d been, they hadn’t had a chance to really dig into Green’s shield, so Pidge figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that they’d only managed to install a sparkler.

Reports from Berlou had continued to pour in, garbled and frantic. Either the resistance or the Galra had received reinforcements, possibly both, and there was some kind of weapon?

It was hard to tell much of anything from the rushed, fragmented messages, especially after they’d endured a game of intergalactic telephone, but things were bad. Pidge spent the thirty second trip through the wormhole’s negative space focused on their breathing, their fingers dancing on the controls. _It’s just one battle after another with us, isn’t it?_

The one thing they _weren’t_ expecting to find on the other side of the wormhole was the missing paladins. But there they were: three little lion heads on the scanners, smiling up at Pidge in vibrant colors. It shouldn’t have surprised them as much as it did. They’d hoped the others would have heard the distress beacon and come to Berlou’s aid, and however resigned Coran and Hunk were, Pidge had never given up hope that Matt and the others were still alive.

Yet for a long second all they could do was stare slack-jawed at their scanner as the Galra blockade caught sight of the new arrivals.

Pidge got their shock under control before it got them killed, taking out the Galra fighters with carefully aimed laser blasts. The new mod taunted Pidge, just a keystroke away, but they resisted the urge. As much as they wanted to see Green fry a swarm of Galra, they figured it should be an in-case-of-emergency thing. The high of invention was no reason to toss safety out the window. At least...not right away.

Hunk charged past Pidge, head-butting one Galra fighter into the two behind it, then, shockingly, followed up with a ranged attack. The castle-ship was the last to emerge from the wormhole, and Coran only had a chance to blow up a single fighter before the mob was gone. For a blockade, it wasn’t all that impressive, but Pidge wasn’t about to complain. Matt was here.

They took off in the direction of Matt’s signal, distantly aware of the three warships in orbit above Berlou. They were practically on the opposite side of the planet from where Pidge and the others had emerged, but they’d obviously taken note of the skirmish. Hundreds more fighters poured out of them, streaking toward the castle-ship and two lions. Pidge coaxed a little more speed out of Green, hoping to slip past the wave of fighters before it arrived, but that just wasn’t happening. Nearly half the Galra closed in below them, the rest firing on Pidge and Hunk from above.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Coran muttered. A moment later, lasers lit up the sky, dropping Galra like flies. Coran whooped. “All right, you two. I’m going to have to man the defenses, which means I’m pretty much parked up here until things clear up. You go on ahead and find the others.”

“Others?” Hunk asked, breathless.

Pidge grinned, riding out another barrage from above. Green’s shield caught a good portion of them, and the little LED on the console glowed a promising green. “We found ‘em, Hunk. Check your scanners.”

Hunk’s answer didn’t quite make it into the realm of words, but Pidge got the picture. Joy, relief, a stubborn refusal to burst into tears.

 _Same here, big guy,_ Pidge thought. _Same here._

There was still a wall of fighters between them and the planet’s atmosphere, but Pidge was done waiting. Throwing everything they’d ever learned about safety protocols out the window, Pidge keyed in the command that activated the new lightning breath generator. (Which totally needed a new name. They’d have to workshop it later.) The cockpit hummed as the weapon powered up.

“Hunk?” Pidge said, grinning. “You might want to stay back.”

“Wait, what?”

Pidge squeezed the trigger. For one heart-stopping second the air filled with screeches and the crackle of lightning, and Pidge was halfway convinced they were going to die a very hot, very flashy death. Then Green roared, the sound as giddy as it was terrifying, and the sky turned white.

Pidge squeezed their eyes shut against the brilliance, twisting their head away, but spots were already dancing behind their eyelids. They realized, belatedly, that they hadn’t _entirely_ thought through the fact that lightning was _bright_ and might make aiming difficult. They were definitely going to have to workshop this whole thing later.

Green rumbled, and Pidge felt her reaching out. It was like a handshake, like a question, like… like someone holding their fingers out for a cat to sniff. Pidge hesitated for only a moment before reciprocating the gesture, reaching out with their mind in a way they couldn’t fully explain. Their bond with Green wasn’t something they’d figured out how to put into words, and this was that bond on an even deeper deeper level. Not just awareness, not just nudges and emotion, but—well, it felt like when the five of them had formed Voltron on the Balmera. Unity and communication without walls.

And then, without opening their eyes, Pidge could see the battle around them. The images had a strange quality to them, like a camera filter, only Pidge couldn’t put their finger on what was different. The lightning shone just as brightly as it had before, but it didn’t burn Pidge’s eyes. They watched in awe as it branched and roiled, leaping from fighter to fighter. They twisted, catching yet more fighters in the storm, and something about the way Pidge moved, or the way the Galra moved, made Pidge’s head spin. Everything was just a little quicker, a little clearer. It was nauseating.

The lightning lasted only a few seconds before it drained the shield’s charge, but it left behind a gaping hole in the Galra defenses. Hunk and Coran were both speechless, and Pidge felt a tingle of pride as they dove down toward the main battle nearer the surface.

Pidge could see the Red Lion up ahead now, darting between fighters and gunships and firing off quick, precise bursts of laserfire. Pidge’s heart leaped into their throat, pounding in time with the tears building in their eyes. It was a good thing Green was lending them her eyes, because their own vision was quickly declining toward a blurry mess.

A pair of Galra fighters broke off from the rest, closing in on the Blue Lion’s tail. No matter how she twisted, she couldn’t lose them, and she shuddered as lasers hammered her from behind.

“Lance!” Hunk roared, body-slamming the fighters into so much salvage.

The Blue Lion twisted, and Lance’s shrill, choked voice rang out. “ _Hunk_!”

“Oh, _man_. You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice.”

Lance’s laugh was as watery as Hunk’s voice. “Right back at ya, buddy.”

Pidge blinked, their connection with Green going out of focus as they swallowed the lump in their throat and dropped down beside the Red Lion. “Matt,” they said, then cleared their throat. “Are you okay?”

“Uh...”

The voice that answered was not one Pidge recognized, and their stomach entered free-fall.

Lance’s voice came on the comms, colder than it had been just a moment before. “Pidge, that’s not Matt.”

With shaking hands, Pidge called up the Red Lion’s video feed, only to find that it had been disabled. Anger and a twisting in their gut made Pidge’s heart pound as they keyed in a series of commands on the keyboard beside their controls. They’d never tried hacking a lion before, and Green’s deep-throated growl said she didn’t appreciate it now, but Pidge didn’t care. They’d come halfway across the universe, joined a rebellion, and fought a Galra warship to find their brother, only to find out someone _else_ in his place? Hell no.

They met little resistance from Red, which could have been shock or sympathy or plain old apathy. Whatever the case, it took only a few seconds to turn the video feed back on.

They recoiled at the sight of a Galra officer, still wearing the armor of the enemy. The visor on his helmet concealed his eyes, but his lips were turned downward into a frown, and he hunched over the controls like he was ready to make a break for it.

Pidge nudged the Green Lion so she hovered directly in Red’s path. “Does anyone want to explain to me why there’s a _Galra_ in my brother’s lion?” they asked in a low, dangerous voice. The Galra tensed further, his lip curling up in a snarl. Pidge’s anger rose higher, pressing at their control. “Who are you?” they demanded. “Where’s Matt?”

“Hang on. _Katie_?”

Pidge bristled. “It’s _Pidge_.”

“Sorry,” said the new voice, and Pidge suddenly realized it was coming from the Black Lion. They reached for their keyboard, ready to hack that video feed, as well, but it opened without prompting, revealing a familiar face. Aged and tired and almost unrecognizable over the Galra armor that he wore, but still familiar. Takashi Shirogane had come to Pidge’s house for dinner often enough for them to recognize him, even if they’d always retreated to their room as soon as the meal was over, rather than stay and chat with Matt’s boring Garrison friend.

They blinked. “Shiro?”

“Yeah.” Shiro gave a lopsided smile, but it faltered as he turned to deal with a squadron of fighters coming up on his left flank. Lance and Hunk had stepped it up, covering Pidge while they faced off with the Red Lion.

“Where’s my brother?” Pidge asked again, because no one seemed to want to volunteer the information, and there was still an enemy sitting in Matt’s lion. “Who’s _he_?”

“That’s Keith,” Shiro said. Pidge recognized his peacemaker voice, the one he used to use on Matt when he had himself worked up over something on the news or politics at the Garrison. It did little to soothe Pidge now. “Don’t worry, he’s a friend.”

Pidge scowled. “Oh, right, and I’m a dancing pink polar bear in the Sahara.” Lance snorted with laughter, and the Galra let out the smallest of growls. It was probably meant to intimidate, but Pidge was _way_ past the point of fear. “But let’s table _that_ little gem of a conversation for now. Where. Is. Matt?”

Shiro took a deep breath, picking off two more fighters before he responded. “He was injured. Allura’s with him.”

Pidge went cold. “Injured? How? Is he okay?”

“We don’t have time to--”

“He’s gonna be fine, Pidge,” Lance cut in, the twisted scowl on his face softening as they locked eyes. “Matt just had to go and play the hero and get himself knocked out. And, hey, I’m as pissed about is as you are, I’m sure. I’d pick Matt over _Keith_ any day, but Matt’s kinda benched himself for the rest of this one. Don’t worry,” he added before Pidge could work themself up into a panic. “I’ll help you murder him when we’re through here.”

Pidge breathed out a laugh, nodded. “I’m gonna hold you to that, you know.”

Lance grinned. “We’ll give him hell, Gunderson, don’t you worry.”

Shiro watched the exchange silently, an odd look on his face. When he noticed Pidge looking at him, though, he forced a smile. “Lance is right, Pidge. Your brother’s going to be just fine. Now let’s get in there and save Berlou. For Matt’s sake.”

“Right.” Pidge sniffled once, then wheeled away from the Red Lion and dove back into the fray.

* * *

_Electricity burned inside him, bright and burning and alive. It filled his veins, his lungs, his head, until he thought he would simply come apart at the seams. It gathered beneath his skin in concentrated pockets of agony, seeds of weaponized Quintessence pressing up against bone and nerve._

_He thought he might have screamed. He thought it might have only been in his head._

_One thought made it through the torture; only one._

She won’t take Shiro from me.

_By the time the attack stopped, he could not feel his body, but he was aware of motion. Of the weapon above him waiting to be destroyed. Red took aim and fired, and Matt placed himself between Shiro and the witch, and black lightning surrounded both him and Red. After the pain of before, this was almost a relief. It ached, but it was a distant sort of pain. He watched with savage delight as her weapon burned._

_After that, he knew only shadows._

* * *

Matt woke screaming.

There was a commotion around him. Hands, pressing down on his shoulders. Voices.

All he could focus on was the pain. It was a fire in his bones, a scattered collection of coals glowing beneath his skin. Darkness clawed at his vision; his mouth felt like cotton and tasted of copper. He lay on something hard and narrow, figures crowding around him, a blinding light overhead.

Red. Where was Red?

A familiar weight settled in the palm of his hand: his bayard. He hadn’t meant to summon it, but it grounded him, teasing apart past and present. The hands had disappeared from his shoulders, the press of bodies pulled back some, and when Matt’s vision cleared he saw a team of Berlua in loose white medical smocks standing a few feet from his bed. He was in a clinic, injured soldiers lined up on cots to either side of him.

Closing his eyes, Matt focused on his breathing, on pushing down the knots of pain that made his stomach churn. His head pounded and his hands shook, but he was okay. He was alive. He was with allies. As long as he focused on that, he could get through this. His bayard, still inactive, rested on his stomach, its weight strangely comforting. When the suffocating panic receded, Matt combed through his recent memories, trying to fill in the gaps. They’d made a run on Haggar’s weapon. Allura and Keith had boarded the ship. Matt had been hit with some kind of druid magic—his body ached at that thought—and Shiro… Something had happened to Shiro. It got fuzzy after that.

After a moment he swung his legs over the side of his cot and sat up, pausing for a moment to wait out the spinning in his head. He felt like he’d been hit by a bus. He felt like he was back in boot camp at the Garrison, every muscle in his body protesting the workout after too long without a regular training regimen. Even the smallest movement hurt.

Whatever that magic was, it had really done a number on him.

One of the medics approached, crouching down so they were on a level with Matt. “My name is Leivi. How are you feeling?” they asked softly.

Matt let out a ragged laugh. “Like shit,” he said honestly. “Where are my friends? Is Shiro--?”

“The other offworlders are fine,” said Leivi. “They fight with our pilots. Your princess is with Kya and Nue.”

Matt let out a long breath. Shiro was fine. Lance was fine. Allura was fine. Keith was-- Matt wondered if Leivi had included Keith in their count of Matt’s friends. He was an offworlder, same as the rest of them. Did that mean he was fighting alongside Lance and Shiro?

Asking sounded like an awful lot of trouble at the moment, so Matt just sat on the edge of his cot and breathed, rubbing his thumb along his bayard’s grip.

The room shook. Leivi tensed and shot a look at the ceiling. Several of the other medics, who had scattered to care for other patients, swore or whimpered in fear. They seemed more agitated than the patients, even the ones who sat upright and alert.

“Something’s wrong,” Matt said to Leivi in a low voice. “What aren’t you telling the other patients?”

Leivi looked at him with something akin to fear, their eyes darting to the nearest cots and to the other medics. No one else had heard Matt’s question, but Leivi seemed reluctant to answer anyway.

Matt leaned forward, gripping Leivi’s hand in his own. “Please, Leivi. I’m a paladin of Voltron. If we’re in danger, I may be able to help.”

“You are hurt.”

“Only a little,” Matt lied. “ _Please_.”

For a moment, Matt thought Leivi would just walk away, retreat to the relative safety of another medic’s company. They seemed young, and Matt suspected they deferred to the other medics in most things. But then Leivi sagged, running a hand down their face. Their eerily long fingers and all-black eyes and waxy skin were a far cry from human, but the weariness and tension in their expression was universal. Matt squeezed their hand.

Leivi let out a long breath and spoke in a breathy whisper Matt had to lean forward to hear. “The Galra have someone inside Faus disabling our shields. The primary shield has been down for more than ten minutes, and the secondary shield covering this sector went out just before you woke up.”

Matt froze. Leivi winced, and Matt realized he’d been crushing their hand. He forced himself to loosen his grip. “Are there plans for an evacuation?”

“The chief medic is working on it, but our comms are down as well, and there is little enough space in the city as it is, and...” They glanced at a door along the far wall. “Some of our patients are in critical condition. We cannot just throw them in a bunker until the battle is over. They would die.”

“Right.” Matt pushed himself to his feet, holding his breath as his body protested the motion. It felt like someone had filled his joints with stones that ground together as he moved. Sharp stabs of pain lanced up his arms and legs, gathering at his collarbone like a puddle of blinding white light. He forced air out through his teeth, releasing the pain with it, then smiled weakly at Leivi, who hovered nearby, ready to catch him if he fell. “Where’s the shield generator?”

Leivi’s eyes widened. “You can’t go out there,” they hissed. “There are Galra out there.”

Matt waved his bayard cheerfully in the air, trying to act confident for Leivi’s sake. “Which is exactly why someone has to take them out. That’s my job.”

“But...”

“I’ve been through a lot worse than this, Leivi. Trust me.”

The way they looked at him said they didn’t believe him, but they were in no position to argue. They were all dead anyway if no one got the shields up and running again. After another moment’s hesitation, they caved, giving Matt directions to the shield generator. His helmet sat on the floor beside his cot, and he snatched it up, settling it over his head on his way out of the clinic. The comms, as Leivi had said, were silent, and the corridors became equally so as Matt approached Generator Seven. Either the people here had fled to other shielded sectors, or they were hiding, waiting for the end.

It was unsettling to walk through somewhere that felt so abandoned, especially with the tremors that shook the city with increasing frequency. Nothing seemed to be hitting near this area, fortunately, but it felt like Matt was walking toward disaster, and the aches that dogged his every step weren’t helping.

At a shout from ahead, Matt picked up his pace. He was halfway to the next intersection before it registered that he’d recognized that voice. Allura. Swearing, Matt forced his bayard into its pistol form, then charged around the corner.

He had a split second to survey the scene. Allura, unarmed, hiding behind a pile of rubble from a collapsed ceiling panel. It looked like she had just chucked a piece of stone the size of a Rottweiler at the Galra officer opposite her. The Galra dodged, raising a rifle toward Allura.

Matt shot first, his laser burning through the Galra gun’s power cell. There was a faint _pop_ , and then the rifle started to crackle with raw Quintessence. An outraged roar tore loose from the Galra’s throat as she dropped the weapon, and she spun on Matt, her yellow eyes glowing like coals in the dust-filled corridor. Another tremor shook the city as Matt activated his shield and braced himself for a fight.

Allura darted out from her hiding place and grabbed the Galra from behind, one arm around her neck, the other pinning her arm behind her back. The Galra struggled, but Allura didn’t stop moving. She spun, grunting, and flung the Galra over her shoulder. The woman flew down the corridor and slammed against the wall. Allura shot Matt a scowl.

“ _You_ ,” she said, “should be resting.”

Matt rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome.”

There was no more time for conversation; the Galra stood up, brushing chips of stone and plaster from her shoulders, then reached to the holster at her side and drew a long, slender cylinder. It activated with the press of a button, and a tendril of violet energy unfurled, long and sinuous, ending in a thinner, white-hot length. An energy whip. Of course she had an energy whip.

Matt grit his teeth and readied himself for battle.

* * *

Shiro rode out a shockwave as Pidge took out three fighters on Black’s tail. He grunted a thank-you, activated Black’s jaw blade, then punched forward toward the fighters dogging a pair of Berlua pilots. At the last moment Shiro cut the starboard engines, and he swung around, coming at the Galra from the side. They barely had time to react before Shiro took them down.

The Berlua dipped their wings in thanks, then streaked off toward Faus to intercept a gunship that was making a run on the city. A fleeting glance was enough to tell Shiro that the shield was still down. This was not going well.

“Good work, paladins.” The voice on the comms was clipped despite an attempt at cheer, and Shiro wheeled the Black Lion around, scanning the skies for signs of trouble. The others had called their eye in the sky Coran, and it had been his warning that alerted the ground forces to the _Herald’s_ run on the city. The fighters and gunships were doing enough damage to Faus as it was; they couldn’t let a warship lay waste to even more.

Fortunately, the Red Lion still had Galra security protocols in her system, and Keith had left the photon cannon a heap of melted parts. Lance and Hunk had disabled the already labored engines, and the three of them were now picking off the remainder of the ship’s turrets. They actually made a pretty good team, aside from the friction between Keith and Lance.

“Lance, watch your tail,” Keith barked.

The Blue Lion spun away from another destroyed turret, unleashing a wall of ice on the fighters trying to catch her unaware. “Keep your furry nose out of this, _Keith_. I know what I’m doing.”

“Really?” Red tucked her legs and dropped neatly beneath a barrage of lasers, then took out her three opponents with three perfectly-aimed shots. “Then I must have imagined you shrieking in terror thirty ticks ago. _Ah. Hunk. Get them off me._ Sound familiar?”

Shiro sighed, charging with Pidge toward the nearest Galra formation—one of the last he could see. “Keith, Lance, play nice. You’re on the same team.”

“He started it,” they said at the same time, both sounding like five-year-olds denied a favorite toy. Pidge muttered an incredulous, _Wow,_ and twisted their lion to catch a burst of laserfire on Green’s shield.

“I don’t care who started it,” Shiro said, peppering a gunship with lasers until it crashed into the scorched landscape below. “We have bigger problems to worry about.”

“And you’re about to have more,” Coran said. A translucent window appeared at the edge of Shiro’s monitor, showing the view from the castle-ship’s bridge. Three warships— _Punisher, Hounder,_ and _Legion_ , all of them front line ships _—_ had joined the battle after Haggar’s retreat. So far they had been content to stay in orbit and chip away at the Castle of Lions, sending their fighters and gunships to the surface as reinforcements.

Now that the Voltron Lions and the Berlua resistance had chewed through the grunts, though, it seemed the commanders were ready to take a more active role. _Hounder_ , which bore a half dozen sonic cannons in place of a photon cannon, and _Legion_ , the sentry-run ship that was heavily armored but lacking in offensive capabilities, had peeled off from _Punisher_ to advance on the planet. _Punisher_ stayed behind. As the only functional warship in the system with a photon cannon, it was the only one that stood a chance of breaking through the castle-ship’s shields.

Shiro resisted the urge to swear. Lance and Pidge already had them covered on that front, and Hunk sounded like he was in physical pain. “More?” he moaned. “Man, I’m so _sick_ of these Galra--” He faltered, and Shiro glanced at Keith’s feed in time to see him grimace. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lance said. “I’m ready to be done with Galra, too.”

“Lance,” Shiro said wearily.

“He’s got a point, though,” Pidge muttered.

Keith’s shoulders rose, taut with pent-up rage. “Okay, I get it! You hate me. Congratulations, you’re the bigger man. But maybe instead of taking it out on me you could focus on stopping the people trying to wipe out an entire planet?”

Lance scoffed. “You mean there’s a difference?”

It was at that moment that Shiro’s patience ran out. “That’s _enough_.” He didn’t shout, but his words were met with absolute silence. “Lance, I know you’re scared.”

“W-what?” Lance spluttered. “Scared? Me? No w--”

“Keith, I know you’re frustrated. I know you’re all worried about Matt, and I know you miss Allura. I know--” Shiro faltered, guilt and regrets condensing inside his lungs and making it hard to get his words out. “I know you don’t trust me and Keith, and I don’t blame you. Everything’s happening at once, and that’s hard to adjust to.” He closed his eyes for a brief moment, gathering his patience. “None of that matters right now.”

 _Legion_ and _Hounder_ dropped through the clouds, their massive size dwarfing the lions and the city below. Shiro ignored the voice inside him saying they’d already lost this fight. It had taken them twenty minutes to disable the _Herald_ , and that was with the help of Faus’s wall-mounted cannons—which had been the first things destroyed when the primary shield went down. Three secondary shields had dropped since then. By the time the lions took out both warships, the city would be in ruins.

Shiro closed his eyes and urged Black toward the approaching warships. However hopeless the battle seemed, they had to _try_.

“Listen to me,” he said, a rumble of pleasure sweeping through his lion as the other four fell in behind her. “Things are rough, but we’ll deal with it _after_ we’ve won. Right now there’s a planet that needs us. That needs _Voltron_. Until Berlou is safe, we aren’t human and Galra. We aren’t friends and strangers, old paladins and new. This is bigger than us.”

There was a beat of silence, and Shiro’s voice echoed in his ears. It sounded like something a stranger would say, words that belonged to a hero, not a twenty-five-year-old ex-prisoner who’d spent the last year just trying to survive.

Then Keith let out a breath, smiling. “Well said.”

Pidge hummed an agreement, and Hunk nodded. Even Lance’s scowl loosened into a grin. “Well alright, then,” he said. “Lead on, Commander Shirogane.”

Shiro laughed, sitting a little straighter in his chair. “I’m no commander, Lance,” he said. “But… thanks. Now let’s go take down those ships.”

The others shouted their agreement, and Shiro leaned harder on his throttle. He could sense the others doing the same way, the knowledge rising from the same dark corner of his mind where the Black Lion lurked. Before he could think about how strange that was, the world around him shifted.

* * *

Voltron slammed into _Legion’s_ bow, metal crumpling like paper beneath their charge. In that instant, the warship twisting skyward, Voltron’s red lion-head fist buried somewhere between the sentry production plant and the forward shield generator, shock rippled through five minds.

It was difficult to say who was most surprised; it seemed to multiply as it spread to fill their collective consciousness, colored only slightly by other emotions. Hunk’s relief, Lance’s resentment, Shiro’s confusion, Pidge’s joy, Keith’s overwhelming _awe_. Lance and Keith’s minds brushed against each other and sank in hooks, the friction threatening to destabilize the whole union until Shiro inserted his own mind between them.

“All right, team,” he said, straining to regain his focus. He was out of his depth, and they all could tell, but Hunk and Lance and Pidge supplied wordless explanations, hazy memories of the last time they had formed Voltron. Shiro took it in, adjusted his grip on the controls, and released their collective tension on his exhale. “Let’s show Zarkon who he’s dealing with.”

Lance and Hunk kicked off _Legion’s_ hull, leaving a gaping hole below the shield generators, which flickered and whined with the effort of maintaining the defenses. Pidge and Keith let loose with their lasers, which shredded the taxed shields and tore into _Legion's_ hull. The ship burned from within, shedding pieces of itself as it pitched down toward the desert below.

Voltron turned toward the _Hounder_ just in time to see it open fire on the city with all six of its sonic cannons.

Dismay tore through the bond, and guilt, and fear. Shiro thought of Matt. Pidge stopped breathing. Lance kicked off the fallen warship behind them, and they flew toward the _Hounder_ , crushing one cannon on impact. They rebounded off, and the _Hounder_ loosed another round with the remaining cannons. Voltron planted themself between the warship and Faus as Pidge raised their shield.

“I don’t think so,” they said, grunting as the blasts hit, forcing Voltron back one meter at a time. “Hunk! We need firepower!”

“Right! Uh...form cannon...thing!”

Hunk plugged in his bayard, and a cannon formed atop Voltron’s shoulder. Lance took more of Voltron’s weight as Hunk took aim at the _Hounder’s_ remaining cannons and engines. Seconds later the sky lit up with laserfire that curved toward the _Hounder,_ smashing through the shields and obliterating weapon and engine alike. Explosions peppered the hull of the ship.

When the barrage faded, _Hounder_ listed to one side, quiet and sullen as its fighters rallied around it, pursued by the Berlua forces.

A swell of pride yielded quickly to worry, and as one the paladins turned back toward the smoldering ruins of Faus.

* * *

Orgul’s whip sizzled as it split the air. She grinned, thoroughly enjoying the look of scarcely-controlled panic on the Altean princess’s face. It had been far too long since Orgul got up close and personal with her victims. The heat of battle, the scent of blood and fear, the satisfying burn deep in her muscles. The only disappointment was that the woman posed no challenge.

She’d come into the battle unarmed, which would have been laughable if it weren’t so depressing. She had speed and strength that would have nearly matched Orgul’s own, if the Altean had managed to close the distance, but she’d obviously never faced a whip before. Few had. That was part of the reason Orgul had chosen her weapon. Surprise was almost as valuable in battle as strength, and the whip was dramatic enough to befit a Galra prince.

The human hung back more than the Altean, pain in every line of his body. His laserfire was more effective than the Altean’s defensive dance, but it still hovered in the range of annoying distraction. Orgul caught a laser on the reinforced bracer on her left wrist and cracked her whip at the human, whose eyes widened in the split second before her fall knocked his shield aside. He stumbled, and Orgul brought her whip back the other direction, catching him in the chest.

He flew back against the wall, his cry of pain like a victory song in Orgul’s ears.

“Matt!” the Altean cried, leaping toward him as Orgul went for the kill. The princess shifted as she ran and caught Orgul’s whip in two Balmeran hands. The scent of seared skin filled the corridor, but the princess didn’t even flinch. Likely she couldn’t feel the heat. Balmerans weren’t just dumb as rocks; they were built like stone, too.

Orgul flicked her whip, trying to break the Altean’s hold, but she held out longer than Orgul thought she would be able to, not letting go until the human had regained his footing. She turned her head, hissed an order, then released the whip, holding her burned hands gingerly against her chest as she reverted to her natural shape. The human hesitated, glancing at Orgul.

Swearing, he let his weapon revert to its inert state, then pressed it into the Altean’s hand. She stared down at it in shock, then up at the human’s pitiful smile.

“For luck,” he said, then turned and ran away.

Orgul stared at his retreating back, dumbfounded, until the princess hit her with a laser blast. Orgul staggered, snarling, as the borrowed weapon reverted from its pistol form to the empty handle. The Altean smiled, spreading her feet. Her dark skin became an even darker purple, her face broadening, her ears rising higher on her skull.

A poor excuse for a Galra stood before Orgul, smiling a challenge, and Orgul’s rage boiled over. She lashed out, her whip cracking against the Altean’s shield. It drove her one step backward, but it was a controlled one step, like it was a decision and not a concession. The pistol reappeared in her hand, a single shot whistling past Orgul’s ear. Orgul attacked again, and again, driving the Altean into a corner. The tip of her whip caught the Altean’s cheek, leaving a thin line of red Altean blood against her false Galra skin.

Dodging another laser, Orgul checked the timer on her wrist. It had been nearly five hundred ticks since she’d set the disruptor on Generator Seven. Any moment now--

The ground shook, a deafening rumble rolling over them. The Altean looked upward in fear, and Orgul laughed.

“Five hundred ticks,” she said, raising her arm, where the timer continued. “My lieutenant believes I’ve been captured, and she’s ordered the attack.”

“But you’ll be killed as well!”

Orgul’s grin widened as another impact rocked the city, closer than before. “Better to be killed than captured,” she said. “It’s wonderful, you know. Having subordinates who don’t waste time questioning orders.”

The next laser hit directly above Generator Seven, and Orgul closed her eyes, content in the knowledge that she had taken out a quarter of the city with her plan. Stone shook, metal screamed, and dust rained down from the ceiling.

Then, silence.

Orgul opened her eyes to find the corridor little worse for wear.

The Altean, who had fallen against the wall, stood and wiped the blood from her cheek. “You’re right,” she said. “Trust among allies is extremely valuable. Matt, were the Berlua able to locate the other disruptors?” There was a pause, and her smile grew to something approaching a taunt. “Excellent. I’m nearly finished here, as well.”

Horror cooled Orgul’s pride. The disruptors—they’d found them? Impossible. If they had, then…

The princess continued to smile, something like pity in her eyes. “Your plan has failed, Commander. Surrender now and--”

Orgul roared, her whip singing for the Altean’s throat. The borrowed weapon flashed white, and the Altean raised a triple-headed flail. She swung, and the flail’s heads ensnared Orgul’s whip, cinching tight as the princess yanked back, drawing Orgul toward her. The princess charged, weapon vanishing just long enough to free itself from Orgul’s whip and reappearing almost instantly as a spear with a serrated head. Orgul stumbled back, trying to create distance between them. Her whip was useless at such close range, but now that the Altean had gone on the offensive, she ceded nothing. Orgul raised her bracer to catch the spearhead swinging for her neck, but her opponent reversed direction and swung low, the butt of her spear sweeping Orgul’s feet out from under her.

She landed on her back, winded, a slender red rapier hovering under her chin.

The Altean wasn’t even breathing hard. She stood straight and still, eyes somber as she looked down at Orgul. “You’ve lost, Commander. Surrender and I’ll spare your life.”

It was a slap in the face, a worse insult than the defeat. There was no surrender for a Galra. _Victory or death._ Orgul screamed, raising her whip in a final, futile attack. The Altean’s mouth tightened as she drove her sword down into Orgul’s heart.

“I’m sorry,” the Altean whispered.

Orgul laughed until the corridor faded to darkness.

* * *

With the Galra army in tatters and only one warship left in fighting shape, the battle was soon over. Voltron helped Coran in the castle-ship disable the _Punisher_ before disbanding.

Even then, there was a lot of work to do. There were fighters and gunships to subdue and several thousand new Galra prisoners to deal with, to say nothing of the injured who needed care and the large swathes of the city that had been reduced to rubble. Allura had gone to collaborate with Kya and Nue on the prisoner issue, Coran had landed the castle-ship just outside the city to offer use of the cryopods to the most critically injured, and Shiro and the other paladins were scattered around the countryside, cleaning up the last of the Galra.

Coran came on the comms now, his voice beginning to show his fatigue. “Picking up a new wormhole above the planet,” he said and for a moment Shiro tensed, expecting the worst. “It’s—yeah, it’s the _Kera_.”

“Who?” Lance asked.

“Rebellion,” Hunk said. “Met ‘em while we were looking for you guys and helped take out a Galra warship that was bothering them.”

Shiro relaxed, letting out a steadying breath.

“Does that mean you guys can finally take a break?” asked Matt, who was down on the surface. He hadn’t said much since the end of the battle, but even a few short sentences—explaining how Orgul had sabotaged the city’s shields, how Allura had defeated her, and how no one could figure out how she’d snuck into the city—had calmed Shiro considerably.

And not just Shiro. Pidge and Lance visibly relaxed at the confirmation that Matt was awake and back on his feet, and it was obvious to all the paladins that Pidge was still in the air only because of a sense of duty that grew thinner with each passing second.

Shiro wasn’t about to prolong the Holts’ reunion any longer than he had to. “Is the _Kera_ able to handle any stragglers we might have missed?”

Coran laughed, the sound summing up the giddy incredulity that had come over them all after the battle. “They should have it well in hand, Shiro, not to worry. Commander Anamuri’s no stranger to battle.”

“All right, then. Let’s head back to the, uh… Is that really a castle?”

“Castle- _ship_ ,” Pidge ammended.

Shiro laughed. “Of course. My mistake.”

The Black Lion seemed to know where to go, for which Shiro was grateful. He was tired enough without having to waste time figuring out where to park his new giant cat. ( _His cat._ Black hummed with affection at that, and Shiro couldn’t help but smile.) Once out of his lion, Shiro headed for the elevator and emerged to chaos on what he assumed was the bridge.

“ _Hunk_!”

Lance was not a large kid, but he barreled across the room with enough force to knock Hunk backwards into the wall. Hunk laughed and lifted Lance off the ground in a bear hug that could have crushed a Galra sentry. Lance’s feet had barely touched the ground when Pidge tackled him from behind, burying their nose in his back.

“Aw, what’s the matter, Gunderson?” Lance asked, reaching behind himself to awkwardly pat them on the head. “Miss me?”

Pidge jabbed him in the kidney, making him wheeze. “Nah, I just miss having an easy target.”

“Very funny. C’mere.” Twisting, Lance caught Pidge in a headlock. Shiro suspected he would have given Pidge a noogie if they hadn’t been wearing their helmet, but instead he settled for holding on Pidge tried to wriggle away.

Smiling, Shiro turned as the last elevator slid open, letting Keith onto the bridge. He lingered in the elevator, watching the other paladins warily. Shiro glanced at Lance long enough to ensure he was well distracted by his friends before heading over to Keith and placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Nice work out there,” Shiro said as Keith looked up at him. He’d removed his helmet, giving Shiro an unobstructed view of his guarded expression. Shiro offered him a reassuring smile. “I think we make better paladins than vigilantes, don’t you?”

A smile tugged at Keith’s lips, but he covered it with a scoff, rolling his eyes and staring at the Altean technology dotting the bridge.

“So… this is going to be a _thing_ now?” Keith asked. It sounded like a loaded question, and Shiro took a moment to study him before he answered.

“I’d like it to be. Why? You aren’t planning on ditching me now, are you?” Shiro asked. Keith looked back at him, his ears twitching like he was consciously trying not to let them betray his thoughts. Shiro squeezed his shoulder. “I won’t force you to stay, Keith, but… It wouldn't be the same without you.”

Keith had a way of holding his tension so close it became invisible, so it wasn't until he relaxed, his shoulders sagging under Shiro’s had, that Shiro realized just how nervous he'd been. With a soft smile, Keith dug an elbow into Shiro’s side. “Why not? It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be.”

Shiro opened his mouth to respond, but their conversation was cut short by Hunk, who pulled them both into a short but enthusiastic hug. When Hunk released them, Keith stood frozen, blinking slowly, his face a blank mask.

“Hunk!” Lance stalked over, hands on his hips. “What are you doing, you traitor?”

Hunk tilted his head to the side, frowning. “What?”

Lance gestured broadly at Keith, who stiffened once more. “He’s a _Galra_.”

“And…?”

Lance spluttered, and Shiro glanced at Hunk, who clapped Keith on the back hard enough to make him stumble.

Keith regained his balance and regarded Hunk warily. “Don’t you have a problem with that?”

“No. Should I?” Hunk glanced around at them, and when no one answered, he shrugged. “Hey. The Red Lion accepted you, which means you’re a paladin. Heck, we _formed Voltron_ together! If that doesn’t make us friends, I don’t know what does.”

Keith ducked his head, smiling a small, pleased smile that warmed Shiro to see. Patting Keith's arm, Shiro nodded at Hunk in silent thanks.

Pidge stepped up beside Lance, scowling. “He’s not the red paladin,” the said. “Matt is.”

Frowning, Hunk scratched his chin. “Can’t they both be?”

“It’s never worked that way before.”

Shiro turned toward the voice to see Coran at the door, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. He nodded to Lance, then approached Shiro and Keith, stroking his mustache.

“Hmm.” Coran glanced between them, then leaned back, planting his hands on his hips. “It’s an enigma!” he declared. “We’ll have to talk later, you two—and you’ll need nicknames. I'm thinking Red Two and Earth Leader, eh?”

“Not you, too, Coran,” Lance moaned. “Has everyone gone crazy?”

Coran waved him off. “Well, never mind that now. We’ve got two more paladins to round up! Come along!”

* * *

After Matt found and destroyed the last disruptor, which was hidden like all the others just below the maintenance hatch on the back of the primary shield generator, he’d headed back to the med clinic. He intended to help with the injured soldiers and civilians, but ended up bullied into a diagnostic scan by Leivi. And of course that was when the others decided to head back to the castle.

“Didn’t you do this when I first got here?” he asked, fidgeting as Leivi waved the sensor over his body. His aches had faded to near nothingness during the battle with Orgul (bless adrenaline), but they were still there, and they proved more than a little distracting now that his life wasn’t in danger. Worse than the pain, though, was the castle full of friends waiting for him just outside the city—if he could ever escape Leivi’s fussing.

Leivi frowned as Matt glanced toward the door for the third time in as many minutes. “Hold still. And… yes. We did scan you before, but something was off. Faulty scanner, maybe.” They bit their lip, the center pair of eyes dropping toward the floor while the outer ones remained focused on the task at hand. Matt stilled, if only out of curiosity. He hadn’t realized the Berlua could control their eyes independently.

“Why? What’d it show?”

“Nothing worth worrying about,” Leivi said in a way that wasn’t wholly reassuring. “Anyway, your princess wants to be sure the magic didn’t do any lasting damage, so I’m supposed to scan you again.” They smiled apologetically, and with one final wave of their scanner, they backed off. “All finished. Wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”

“Torture,” Matt replied dryly. “Do I have to wait here, or…?”

Leivi rolled all four of their eyes and waved him toward the door. “I’ll call you when the results are in. Could be a while, depending on how many priority scans are in the queue. Go on.”

Matt smiled and headed for the door. He was still dressed in full armor, in part because he’d been too busy to go back to the castle-ship, in part because he hadn’t wanted to lose his armor’s comm system. It had been a comfort to hear Shiro and Pidge and the others giving each other updates on the state of the battle.

As he reached the surface streets, Matt picked up the pace, his aches a little easier to ignore knowing that the others were just ahead. Allura was waiting for him at the city gates—or what remained of them after the final assault. It was strange to be on the planet’s surface, walking among the rubble, when the Berlua were still gathered below, but Matt relished the fresh air. He took off his helmet and let the wind cool his flushed cheeks as they climbed over the ruins of the outer wall to where the castle-ship waited.

Matt thought he’d never seen a more welcome sight than the Castle of Lions, standing tall and shiny in the fading sunlight—except, perhaps, for the welcoming committee gathered at the bottom of the ramp. Hunk and Lance had their arms around each other’s shoulders, Hunk grinning at Lance, who scowled at something Pidge had said. Shiro stood nearby, his hand on Keith’s shoulder while Coran interrogated them about—well, who knew, with Coran? Anything and everything.

Pidge was the first to catch sight of Matt and Allura, and they shouted Matt’s name loud enough to startle a flock of what looked like reptilian vultures gathered some hundred yards away.

Matt stumbled as Pidge crashed into him, swallowing his grunt of pain. Pidge squeezed him tight enough to be strangling, but Matt bore it silently, wrapping his arms around them and kissing the top of their head.

“You’re not allowed to do that anymore,” they muttered into his chest. “You’re not allowed to leave.”

Matt closed his eyes, his throat constricting. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m glad you’re safe, though.”

Pidge only squeezed him tighter.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Coran said, his voice so soft Matt wouldn’t have heard it if the man hadn’t been standing right beside him, facing Allura.

Allura choked out a laugh that was thick with tears. “I know. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“I know,” Coran whispered. He pulled Allura against him, one hand resting lightly on the back of her head. “I know.”

Smiling tearfully, Allura leaned into him, her hands clinging to the back of his jumpsuit. “You know, it’s your own fault.” Coran made an offended noise, but Allura continued before he could say anything. “You’ve gotta be faster than that if you’re gonna be _my_ nanny, Uncle Rannie.”

Her words startled a laugh out of Coran, but it soon turned to sobs. “Oh, Allura...”

She rubbed his back, smiling into his shoulder.

The others joined them a moment later, Shiro hanging back with an awkward look at the quivering, Pidge-shaped lump still attached to Matt’s waist. Matt just shrugged helplessly and pulled Shiro in for a quick, chaste kiss. He was pretty sure he heard a coo from Hunk, and when they broke apart Pidge was peering up at him with a curious, mischievous look that promised incessant teasing once they’d all had a chance to rest. Honestly, though, Matt was okay with that.

“I heard you formed Voltron,” Allura said when she finally broke apart from Coran, who produced a handkerchief from somewhere and blew his nose in it.

Shiro flushed, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah, I guess we did.”

Allura smiled. “Very impressive. We’re lucky to have you—both of you,” she added with a look at Keith, who had lingered behind the rest of the group, leaning against one of the castle-ship’s support structures.

He squirmed at the sudden attention, his ears laying back as he glanced toward the younger paladins. Pidge regarded him with a prickly sort of wariness, but that couldn’t compare to Lance, who looked like he’d die for an excuse to trade blows with the young Galra.

 _Well,_ Matt thought. _That’s something we’re going to have to work on._ He ruffled Pidge’s hair, then pulled away from them to approach Keith, who stiffened, watching him like he expected a fight. Matt smiled reassuringly. It wasn’t an effort this time; as much as Keith’s appearance set Matt’s teeth on edge, he knew now why Shiro had taken the kid under his wing. “I told you,” Matt said, punching him gently in the arm. “Red likes you.”

Keith’s ears perked up at that, though his face gave little away. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. So how’d she handle?”

A smile tugged at Keith’s lips. “Like a dream. But--” His smile vanished as quickly as it had come. “How does this work? You, me, the Red Lion?”

“I have no idea,” Matt admitted, chuckling. “But we’ll figure it out. Together.”

Shiro’s hand pressed into the small of Matt’s back, and Matt turned to find him beaming, his gray eyes glowing. “Together,” he agreed.

* * *

Leivi called Matt back to the clinic an hour later. They offered to review the scan results in private, but the look on their face said the news wasn’t good, so Matt opted to stay with his friends, who had tagged along, unwilling to split up so soon after reuniting. Anyway, Matt would have had to beat Pidge and Shiro off with a stick to get them to leave him alone with the medic, and he certainly wasn’t feeling up to that.

There were too many people in the clinic for private rooms, even now that the city had begun to venture out of the tunnels, allowing the clinic to take over several nearby bunkers. Still, Leivi found a quiet corner where a curtain had been strung up. Matt and the others squeezed inside, and Leivi drew the curtain. They paused, then sighed.

“Just tell me,” Matt said, nervous energy buzzing beneath his skin.

Leivi nodded and produced a handheld device that projected a holographic display of a human body at a quarter scale. Dozens of tiny bright spots dotted the homunculus like stars, some barely a pinprick, others much larger. There seemed to be no pattern to their placement, though the smaller lights were concentrated in his hands, shoulders, and pelvis, the larger ones clustered around his heart, lungs, and gut. A dozen lights so tiny they were easily missed traced the path of his spine.

Matt opened his mouth to ask what the lights were, but no sound came out.

“As it happens, the original scan was accurate,” Leivi said, their eyes holding an apology that Matt’s brain recognized but refused to process. “Medic Mawai did a biopsy after the first scan—before you woke up—but the techs were so swamped it got delayed. After the second scan came back, Mawai marked it as a priority sample, and…”

Lance growled in frustration. “Just spit it out already!”

“Crystal. It’s… it’s all crystal.”

Leivi kept talking, but Matt’s world became haze and white noise until they produced a vial filled with clear liquid. Resting on the bottom of the vial was a tiny fragment of crystal, no larger than a mosquito, rough at the base and opaque, but with one smooth face that caught the light and flashed. Matt held the vial in trembling hands, only distantly aware of the others surrounding him, pressing Leivi for answers.

“This was inside of me?”

His voice was small, but it silenced the others. Matt realized he’d sat down at some point. Pidge sat on one side of him, Shiro on the other, both of them holding onto him like they thought he might turn to dust if they looked away.

Leivi looked at Matt with pity. They seemed to be searching for something encouraging to say, but in the end they settled on a simple, “Yes.”

“Well, what do we do about it?” Pidge asked.

The silence stretched only for a moment, but for Matt it felt like an eternity, his heart pounding in his chest, the bright spots of pain under his skin burning with renewed heat. Finally, Leivi spoke. “We’re still weighing our options,” they said. “Healing pods are out, as the crystal responds to Quintessence.”

“Responds how?” Matt asked, his voice sounding like a stranger’s. Too calm, too strong.

“Quintessence makes the crystal grow.” Leivi turned off the holographic display, for which Matt was grateful. The sight of all the lights—all the crystals—had started to make him queasy. “Surgery may be an option, but--”

“No.” Matt felt himself tense, the way he felt Red’s tension in battle. It was a distant sensation, tangible but removed from Matt himself. Memories of other operating rooms, other doctors, pressed in around him with a fear that threatened to break through his numbness. “No,” he repeated, more firmly this time. “Not surgery.”

Shiro’s hand stilled on Matt’s back, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Shiro, to see the realization in his eyes, the horror, the pity. _This is what they did to me,_ Matt thought. _I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you to know._

Leivi, mercifully, didn’t try to argue. “Fair enough. As I said, we’re still looking at our options. No one here has seen this before. The only thing that’s even vaguely similar is--”

“The Balmera.” Hunk looked at Matt, but quickly averted his eyes. “Crystals that grow inside a living creature? It’s a little bit like Balmera crystals, right? I mean, not really, but, well, it’s better than nothing.” Hunk paused, rubbing his ear. “We should call Shay. Her people might be able to help.”

Coran nodded. “I’m on it.” He laid his hand on Matt’s shoulder for a moment, nodded, then headed out through the gap in the curtain. Matt remained seated on the cot, his fingers curled around the vial holding the crystal fragment, numb.

Shiro wrapped his arms around Matt’s shoulders, pulling him close. “It’s going to be okay, Matt,” he whispered, as much a plea as a promise. “You’re going to be okay.”

* * *

Thace found chaos as he stepped out of his personal vessel onto the familiar deck of the _Sentry_. Soldiers scurried across the hangar, techs typed frantically at data stations along the walls. Overhead, an unfamiliar voice called for Lieutenants Vit and Beata to report to the bridge. Everywhere he looked he saw panic and deep-seated unease that suggested more than a new assignment or a looming battle.

 _I leave for three weeks…_ he thought, nodding to the mechanic who was already running the standard checks on Thace’s ship. He didn’t wait around long enough for anyone else to notice him or strike up a conversation. There were only two people on this ship he wanted to talk to right now, and he knew which one was the higher priority.

Ordinarily, she would have been in her quarters at this hour, but Thace doubted anyone aboard the _Sentry_ was resting tonight, so he headed for Internal Security and knocked on the captain’s door. The woman who opened it looked like someone ready to snap, her slender ears quivering with rage, her fur tousled and in need of a wash. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she bit down on her greeting.

“Nadezda,” Thace said, smiling as she growled. “Lovely to see you. When was the last time you slept?”

The look she gave him could have roused a cryogenically frozen Ziva, but she waved him inside, muttering, “How many times do I have to ask before you start calling me Dez?”

Thace paused, stroking his chin. “At least once more.”

“Then please, darling dear friend of mine, call me Dez.”

“Hm. No, I don’t think I will.” Thace took a seat, and Dez, rubbing a hand down her face, leaned against her desk. Most of its surface was covered in memory sticks and data pads and even a few paper files—very vintage. “Busy day?” he asked, laying the charm on extra thick.

Dez only glared at him.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I haven’t exactly been touring the Honeyed Moons of Thessalore, either.”

“I’m sure it’s tiring work, slipping away from battle just before things take a turn toward the apocalyptic.”

Thace raised an eyebrow. “That bad?”

“Put it this way: We’re down five warships and one druidic superweapon, Haggar and the Emperor are both searching for someone to blame, and Berlou may be turning into the first real stronghold for the resistance in a thousand years—complete with annoyingly proficient defenses and a direct line to Voltron.” She dug through the pile of memory sticks on her desk and tossed one to Thace. “That’s the full report. You can read _it_ if you want more information, because I’m beyond done talking about Berlou.”

Thace nodded and slid the memory stick into his pocket. He would have to review it later, see just how badly Voltron had crushed the forces on Berlou. It would make for some nice entertainment before bed. “And the _Sentry_? Anything catastrophic happen here while I was away, or is everyone just scrambling to get things in order before Zarkon decides we’re the scapegoats of the movement? Perhaps you have some new orders to pass along?”

“ _Thace_.”

Thace raised an eyebrow, thoroughly unimpressed. “Nadezda, please, I really must protest the dramatics. You and I both know the room is already secure.”

Dez’s face darkened. “You don’t know that.”

“I saw you press the button on your belt you think no one knows about.”

She didn’t _precisely_ yelp in indignation, but it was near enough to make Thace laugh. Dez bared her teeth at him, her ears pinned back. “Don’t look at me like that, Captain. I’ve known you far too long for your feral act to work.”

Dez continued her posturing a moment longer, and Thace reminded himself that she dealt with more old-blood Galra than he. Posturing was in her bones at this point, even if she was mostly harmless underneath. (Harmless to those she considered friends, at any rate, and Thace felt secure in his standing on that list.) Eventually, she sighed and uncrossed her arms. “Fine, fine. We can talk—but you’re starting. How’d it go? Keena’s son get himself killed yet?”

“Miraculously, no.” Thace rubbed a knot out of his neck and groaned. “He and the Champion did defect, though. I imagine they took part in the battle that’s giving you all this grief.”

“I imagine so,” Dez said in a voice that danced with humor. Thace stared at her until she cracked. “I hear they joined Team Voltron. They’re paladins now.”

Thace stared at her, his mouth dropping open. “They’re— Are you joking? They could have been the Alteans’ problem all this time? Don’t laugh!” he added, because Dez had folded over on herself, her ears quivering with mirth. “Do you have _any_ idea what sort of nightmare it was keeping those boys alive? And they--” He sighed, leaning back to wait out Dez’s fit of laughter. It was a good thing her office was sound-proofed, or her subordinates would have some very uncomfortable questions about her dealings with Prorok’s favorite lieutenant.

Eventually Dez straightened, still grinning, and wiped her eye.

“Are you quite finished?”

"You’re the one who volunteered to watch them.”

“Keena--” Thace began, but Dez cut him off.

“I know.” Her smile turned nostalgic. “We served together on the _Executioner_ , before she married.”

Thace relaxed, staring at the wall behind Dez. “I promised her I’d look after her son, before she—well. I couldn’t just leave him to charge off and get himself killed.”

“I’m sure she’d thank you if she were here.”

“She’d twist my ears and shout until her voice gave out, and you know it,” he said. “Then tell me all the ways she could have done a better job.”

Dez produced a flask from her desk drawer, raised it, then took a long pull. “She could have, too. I miss having her around.” She tipped the flask toward Thace, who waved it away.

“She was the best of us,” Thace agreed. He allowed a moment of silent respect for days passed, then leaned forward. “So. I’m going to have to report to Prorok soon. Anything I should know?”

“Not in particular. Everyone’s on edge now that Voltron’s returned, and Haggar’s stepping up her timetable on Project Robeast. Everyone’s stepped up their timetables, honestly. Trying to make a good impression on Zarkon before he goes on another one of his power trips and kills us all.”

Thace snorted, wishing that was an exaggeration, but he’d seen the aftereffects of Zarkon’s anger. He’d have to watch his step more than usual the next few days. Even with the forged transmission from Dusan ordering Thace off Berlou, he would still be under scrutiny for a time. The consequences of surviving a disaster, he supposed. But he’d weathered that storm before, and he would weather it again. Too many people were counting on him to bow out of the game just yet.

“Oh,” Dez said as Thace stood and headed for the door. “One more thing. You do have a new mission.”

“And you were planning on tell me this… when?”

She fixed him with an exasperated frown. “Now, obviously. Would you like to hear it or not?” She waited for him to gesture her onward, then slid another memory stick across the desk toward him. It looked just like any other memory stick, and if plugged in like normal it would produce bland, useless information. Expense reports or shipping records, maybe. Only someone who knew the secret could access the real files.

Thace slid the memory stick into his pocket beside the first. “What is this now?”

“CORE.”

“I’m sorry?”

“CORE. We don’t know much about it, but we suspect it has something to do with Project Robeast. Find out what it is and give us a way to shut it down.”

Thace nodded. “Ah. Another nice, simple, straight-forward mission. Here I was worried they’d ask me to map out a nebula for them. Maybe search the universe for that one planet Tel visited that one time, you remember, with the trees?”

Chuckling, Dez shooed him toward the door. “Hey, you’re the one who tracked down Tel’s mystery planet. If you didn’t want the vague jobs, you shouldn’t have let on you were good at them.”

“A mistake that will haunt me to the end of my days.” Thace sighed, then raised a hand in farewell and headed off to see Prorok about the next planet they were to invade.

* * *

“There’s been a change of plans.”

Mitch Iverson scowled at the radio transmitter sitting on his desk. Not for the first time, he wished this was a video call, or even an in-person conference—though he knew better than to expect that, however satisfying it would have been to impress Vanda with a show of military force. Anything to keep her from patronizing him as she had been doing since they’d entered into this arrangement. She could do with a reminder that Iverson was not a pawn in her game.

“Oh?” he asked, pouring every ounce of disdain he had into that one syllable. “Why am I not surprised?”

The voice on the other end of the line paused, and Iverson allowed himself a small smile. He took his victories where he could when the Galra Empire was involved.

“What is it this time?” Iverson demanded. “Budget cuts? Or did another one of Haggar’s science fair projects take priority over yours? Maybe you’re just _trying_ to piss me off.”

Vanda growled, a sound that once would have intimidated Iverson, just as her fangs and seven-foot-plus frame had once intimidated him. That was before he saw the mighty Galra commander for what she really was: a bureaucrat. For all her bark, she posed little real threat to Iverson and his Garrison.

“There was a...complication at the front lines,” she said at length. The words seemed torn from her throat, like her wounded pride and her disdain for Iverson were evenly matched. “The Emperor doesn’t want to draw our foe’s attention to this initiative before we’re prepared to stand against their full strength.”

Iverson snorted. “I’ve been telling you for _months_ , Vanda. An open invasion is a dumb-ass idea when I’ve already established myself here. Make a move like that and you won’t have time to worry about this enemy of yours. Half the free world will join forces against you—and if you think I can stop that, you really are a moron.”

“So we should go with _your_ plan?” Vanda snapped, biting off each word. “Sneak around? Cower away from a fight? We can crush any army that might rise against us.”

“And how long do you think that’ll take? I was under the impression that conquest was _not_ your top priority.” Whatever Vanda had been about to say fizzled out in a grunt, and Iverson pressed his advantage. “The first phase is ready to implement, by the way. You’re welcome.”

Vanda huffed a few times, obviously unwilling to admit that Iverson had bested her in the contest neither of them had openly acknowledged. “Fine. You may begin recruitment. Let me know when you’re ready to begin. _Vrepit--_ ”

Iverson cut the connection before the insufferable woman could finish.

* * *

 _Shit_.

Val Mendoza clapped a hand over her mouth to contain the scream building behind her teeth.

_Holy shit._

This was not part of the plan. She’d come to the Garrison hoping to learn something about the strange ship that had crashed in the desert last month, or maybe to uncover a clue to her missing cousin’s whereabouts. She hadn’t been banking on treason.

Hands shaking, Val checked her phone to make sure she’d captured the conversation she’d just heard. _Iverson. Plotting_  an invasion with somebody named Vanda. This was big. This was _national headlines_ big. _Shit_. What did she even do with this? It was the sort of blackmail she could use to make Iverson do whatever she wanted—maybe even get Lance and the other students back from wherever he’d hidden them.

But this was a matter of national security. Wasn’t she morally obligated to tell someone? Probably, right? Except who was she supposed to go to? Who could she _trust,_  if the commander of the Galaxy Garrison was working with the enemy? International conspiracies were _so_ far out of her league.

The first thing to do was call Mrs. H. She’d know what to do. She _always_ knew what to do.

Unfortunately, she was twenty feet underground in a gigantic concrete box. She had no signal, no data, nada. Akira had managed to get her the door codes, but if there was wifi here in the Garrison’s command center, Akira wasn’t authorized to know the security key.

Adrenaline buzzing in her ears, Val turned toward the exit. If she didn’t tell someone about this soon, she was going to burst.

A hand closed around her arm, and she shrieked, turning to find Iverson looming over her. He did _not_ look happy.

“ _You_ again?” Iverson grumbled something about _damn nosy girls_. “You’re that Mendoza kid, aren’t you? The one we caught trespassing a few weeks back.”

“Val Mendoza,” she supplied. “Investigative reporter. Mind if I record this?” Smiling brightly, Val switched her phone out for the digital recorder she kept in her back pocket for emergencies, praying Iverson didn’t notice the sleight of hand. She pressed the start button and waved the recorder toward Iverson’s face.

As expected, he snatched it out of her hand, then proceeded to crush it under his heel. Val didn’t have to feign her dismay. Thirty bucks was a lot to throw away when you were (technically) unemployed.

“What are you doing here?” Iverson hissed, shaking Val until her head rattled. “How much did you hear?”

Val glanced over her shoulder and saw two more men in officers’ uniforms closing in behind her. The odds of winning another stint in the Garrison’s holding cells were climbing toward inevitable, so Val went for a bluff.

“I heard everything,” she said, her voice blessedly steady. “And before you think about trying to shut me up like you shut up the last people to uncover your treason, you should know I’ve got an inside man. It’s over, Iverson. My friend knows where I am and what you’re up to, and we’re not going to stop until you’re rotting in a federal penitentiary.”

Iverson stared at her for a long, terrifying second, during which Val calculated her chances of outrunning a couple of active-duty airmen without getting shot.

Then, Iverson smiled.

“Looks like Vanda’s got her first guinea pig,” he said with a short gesture to the men behind Val. She spun, a cry for help springing to her lips.

Something cracked against the back of her head, igniting white starbursts across her vision. She only had a fraction of a second to appreciate just how screwed she was before she blacked out.

**End Season 1**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... now might be a good time to check out _Mama Holt's Army_ if you haven't already. It introduces Val Mendoza, Akira Shirogane, and "Mrs. H" (Karen Holt), along with Eli Kahale, who sadly didn't make it into this little scene, and gives a little bit of context for what you saw here and what you're going to see in Season 2.
> 
> Aside from that, here's a little preview of what's coming up for the Voltron: Duality series:
> 
> -The plan is to write a total of three "seasons" (main fics, each as long as this one or longer) and a number of side stories. I have concrete plans for four side stories (including _Mama Holt's Army_ ), along with a handful of other ideas that may or may not pan out.
> 
> -Season 2, _Someplace Like Home,_ begins two weeks from today, on December 12. I'm taking a week off because planning the next fic (combined with Thanksgiving family chaos) slowed down my writing a little. So one week's break, then we dive right back into the mayhem. Tentatively planned for 22 chapters, _Someplace Like Home_ will update weekly on Mondays just like this fic has.
> 
> -The next short story in the series is going to be called _One Week to Say Goodbye_. It's a Coran-centric fic set in the week between when Allura entered cryostasis and when Coran joined her. Featuring lots of flashbacks to Allura's childhood, a pinch of unrequited Coran/Alfor, and some cameos by the previous generation of paladins. Look for it around New Year's.
> 
> I have a few more ideas stewing, but those are much further down the line, so I'll leave it here for now. Thanks for sticking with me, and I'll see you in season two!


	20. Season Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Season Two, _Someplace Like Home_ is now up! Find it on my profile or on the page for the _Voltron: Duality_ series, or read a preview below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally meant to post this yesterday with the chapter, but oh well. For anyone who follows this story but hasn't seen yet that the sequel is up. Read the sequel here

“I know I said this before,” Lance said as he steered the Blue Lion toward Vel-17. “But I’m _really_ not sure we should be doing this.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Keith. “ _Scared?_ ”

Lance squeezed Blue’s controls so tight she growled a warning in the back of his mind. He wasn’t sure if she was telling him to calm down, or if she was just grumpy because _he_ was grumpy. He was running with the second option, because he didn't think calm was an option right now.

“Uh, _no_ ,” he said, keeping his voice light. “I’m not scared. _Pssh_. As if. I just don’t want to get back to the others and have Allura yell at me for doing something stupid.”

“Don’t worry,” said Pidge, who was flying point in their little three-man formation. “We’ll just blame it on Keith.”

Lance laughed and Keith scowled in the little box tucked away in the corner of Lance’s viewscreen. Keith had spent the first leg of their mission trying to keep his feed audio-only, but Pidge had modified the comm system so he couldn’t shut off the video. (Not that it would have mattered if he did. Twenty-four hours wasn’t enough time to forget the Galra who’d cheated his way onto their team.)

“Cool your jets, Chewbacca,” Lance said, switching over to short-range scanners as they neared their destination. “The grown-ups all adore you, so it’s not like they’re gonna kick you off the team for this. Hell, they’ll probably give you a medal for taking initiative.”

A faint growl came over the comms, and Lance was pretty sure it wasn’t Red. But all Keith said was, “Stop calling me that.”

“What, Chewbacca?” Lance asked, all innocence and charm.

“ _Yes._ ”

“Fine.” Lance gave an exaggerated shrug. “How about Wolverine? Leomon? Beast Boy? Nightcrawler? Or do you want to go back to Furbie?”

Keith was definitely growling now, his yellow eyes glowing like coals in his fuzzy purple face.

Lance grinned, silently daring Keith to say something. Fighting one battle with them didn’t make him a paladin, and as soon as Matt was back on his feet, Keith was a goner. The fact that he’d helped them form Voltron didn’t change anything. They may have all shared a mind, in a certain sense, but the link wasn’t without limits. So, sure, Keith had wanted to save the besieged planet of Berlou—not that Lance believed for a second there was no ulterior motive there—but he’d also kept his mind conspicuously distant from the rest of theirs. Almost like he had something to hide.

Allura and Coran didn’t see it. When Pidge had proposed hitting a Galra base for information on what they’d done to Matt, and Keith had offered his “expertise” with Galra computers, both Alteans had smiled at him like he was a cherubic little icon of paladin virtue. Lance had come because Hunk wanted to see Shay, Shiro refused to leave Matt’s side, and Allura didn’t seem to see the problem in leaving Pidge alone with a Galra.

“Okay, guys,” said Pidge. “We’re gonna have to circle back around to the whole naming issue.”

“There _is_ no issue! My name is Keith.”

Pidge ignored him. “Right now we need to focus on the information.”

“Fine.” Keith leaned on his thrusters and shot ahead of the other two. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Pidge took off after him, but Lance hung back. He wasn’t scared, exactly, but the last time they’d come to Vel-17 Lance had almost been eaten by space zombies, then got dropped on an undead planet halfway across the universe with no way to let his best friend know he was alive. Lance couldn’t do that to Hunk again. No way.

But the little isolated moon base they’d hit a couple hours ago didn’t have access to the research logs from Vel-17, where Matt had been held for almost a year. Pidge had made the executive decision to return to Vel-17, Keith had instantly agreed, and Lance wasn’t going to be the coward who ran away from a challenge. Though he had to admit it felt like a stroke of bad luck Pidge and Hunk had thought to salvage wormhole generators from the wrecked Galra fleet on Berlou. They wouldn’t have been able to come all the way out to Vel-17 without the castle-ship otherwise.

Well. No helping it now. Lance would just have to suck it up and hope the monsters were feeling a little less vicious today. They couldn’t have found much food or water down there in the last week, right? Maybe they were already dead.

Or maybe they were some kind of super-zombie that was basically immortal and ate people just for funsies.

“There,” Pidge said as Lance finally caught up with them. The prison complex lay below them, small and silent from above. Lance’s eyes went to the perfectly round hole in the center of the building, where walls and floor and dirt had been cleanly cut away. There had once been a tarp stretched across the hole in the roof, but it lay in tatters now, crumpled on the bottom of the crater near the newer, smaller hole. That was where Lance, Matt, and Allura had been right before the Galra experiments had drop-kicked them across the universe.

Lance checked the BLIP-tech sensors Pidge had installed in Blue. With all three lions helping, the scanners were able to identify three lifeforms inside the prison—faint signals, clustered together in the northern wing of the building. They seemed to shiver on the display, skittering around the prison complex like cockroaches on a sugar high.

“Keith, hold on,” said Pidge as the Red Lion headed for the surface.

“ _What?_ ” Keith snapped.

Lance scowled. “Nothing. Pidge was just, y’know, trying to keep you from getting vaporized by the monsters down there.” Red slowed, and Lance let Blue drift around to face her. “Look, you wanna go get yourself killed, I’m not gonna stop you. But you _do_ have one of my best friends’ lions at the moment, so maybe you could show a little common courtesy and keep her out of it.”

“We need to draw those things out into the open,” Pidge said swiftly, cutting off whatever Keith might have had to say in response. “I don’t want to risk destroying the computers.”

“Right.” Lance circled the prison once, worrying his lip as he scanned for movement. The place remained as dead as the rest of the planet, which was even more drab and depressing in daylight, all gray rock and colorless sky. There was no break in the clouds, which weighed down on Blue’s back like a physical weight, crushing her toward the creatures below.

After a moment, Lance retreated toward the Green Lion and blew out a long sigh.

“Okay, I give up. How do we draw them out?”

Pidge hesitated, which made Lance feel at least thirty percent better about not having any useful ideas. Eventually, they shrugged. “Make some noise?”

Lance didn’t need to ask what that meant. Or, well, he didn’t get a _chance_ to ask what that meant, because Pidge wheeled around and opened fire at almost the exact same moment they finished speaking. Green’s lasers burned stripes across Lance’s vision and kicked up a cloud of ashen dust and rock chips.

Lance pulled back on his controls, eyeing Pidge’s video feed warily. “Remind me who decided you were old enough to be trusted with death lasers?”

Pidge grinned. “Shut up and help me make a mess.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Interlude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831152) by [Wooster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wooster/pseuds/Wooster)
  * [Fanart for Voltron: Duality](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12548560) by [niyalune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/niyalune/pseuds/niyalune)




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